Its surprising sometimes what turns up on your own doorstep that you never knew was there.
In this instance, its a farm pond of a about 2 acres, supposedly dug and stocked in 2000 with Carp, Tench Rudd, Roach, and bream.
We turned up late in the afternoon, and tried a lightweight very general approach.
A single ledger rod each with a little feed went into the margins and out to an island.
Then in front of us, we both tried some basic float fishing on a lift bite rig.
We had failed to get any maggots, so used tiny lumps of bread, or soft little hooker pellets on the hook.
This turned out OK, and the floating produced a new species for me - Rudd. Fishing at a few feet depth in about 5ft of water, we both picked up a slow but relatively steady collection of the most stunning little bronze fish. I had no idea Rudd had such stunning colors. Its almost as if they had been created to complement and balance the blast of blinding silver that is the Roach.
After a while and gently flicking in a little hemp and ground bait, they got a little bigger, until we got fish of about 4 ozs or so.
I also had the only bite of the day on ledgering, which I had moved from the island to just off the marginal shelf, and had a nice one, slightly larger again. Perhaps 6oz ? Mike and I were both surprised at this, as we both had Rudd in mind (and mike from experience) as mid water or surface feeders.
As usual in this heady summer we are having
The bites soon disappeared and as son as there was a gap in the downpour, we bundled the gear away and scuttled back to the car.
However, I did have a couple of new little friends that were very tame and very funny.
