A pond, somewhere in West Norfolk

      The hot and sleepy corner of an overgrown pond somewhere in a corner of West Norfolk and for me a few hours of peace, quiet and different social isolation in a truly rural jungle. The pond is quite large but has very heavy reed growth as well as some dense weed beds, the pollen coating the surface of the water was dense too, almost like an oil film. It's going to be a real labour of love to thin all of the reed growth out and create some open water although the overgrown pools in the reeds do deter the Cormorants.

      All of the fish that I caught showed no wounds from Cormorant beaks so in one way the weed is good in deterring those black prehistoric looking birds from their hunting.
      The first cast, using tinned sweetcorn, yielded a plump and beautifully coloured and conditioned Rudd and from that point on it was almost a bite a cast. I lost count after just over twenty Rudd, forget the numbers and just fish.

      The fish certainly put a lovely curve in my old Edgar Sealy Spanish Reed match rod. I do like Rudd, the colouring of the Rudd is fantastic and my thinking is that they must all shop at the same place as the perch do to have those red fins. Beautiful.

      A change to tinned chick peas started to bring Roach as well as more Rudd and some Roach/Bream hybrids just for good measure. To begin with I was unable to keep the chick peas on the size twelve barbless hook but a change to a size eight did the trick and reduced the bait loss percentage well in my favour.

      To round the session off nicely I managed to hook a small Crucian Carp on the chick pea offering and that fairly made my evening. Sadly while I was taking the old rod down to go home for a well earned beer both of the female ferrules came away on the rod so some repairs and careful glueing are needed to the old cane to restore it to a usable condition again. Fortunately I know a man who can help.
       Here's another bonus sighting shown below, a large and wonderfully coloured Dragonfly, blue and brown varieties were constantly resting on the rod throughout the session so conditions in the pond must be perfect for them too.