" There lay a pond, set in its little alp of green - only a pond, but large enough to contain the human body, and pure enough to reflect the sky ..."
I am a lover of ponds, and for me a small and intimate pond is second only to a river in my hierarchy of locations for piscatorial adventure. I concede the primary position to the river on account of its embodiment of life and movement, and its constant restless reinvention of itself as currents and floods scour out and redefine its gravel or silty bottom, an endless exercise in redefinition but the pond runs it a close second and holds a more venerated place in my esteem than larger lakes, lochs or reservoirs. Ponds spirit us back to childhood and their close confines envelop the angler in warm embrace.
This past weekend fishing with friends all of whom are fellow members of the Christian Anglers club, a group that combines two of the passions that have guided and defined my life, saw me wet a line in two different ponds, one the archetypal farm pond of less than an acre that would have seemed familiar to Mr Crabtree and his young protégé, the other a body of water that I would describe as a pond but that possibly exists in the intersection between large pond and small lake.
Both provided good fishing, the first of them so "good" that it was in danger of going beyond good and becoming banal, so unrelentingly frequent were the captures of small yet feisty mirror and common carp. In fact for a while I opted to wind in and wind down, covering my face with my hat and allowing myself to be overcome by sleep.
The second pond compensated for what it lacked in rolling fields and the noise of decidedly vocal sheep (the first was situated on a working farm) with mature trees lining the water's edge and an avian symphony replacing the ovine backing track.
Although the second pond does contain carp it avoids being dominated by them and they mostly manage to evade the angler's baits and escape capture. This is a pond dominated by roach and rudd, silver and golden in sheen and a couple of evening's dropping a float into its margins resulted in plenty of roach and rudd. On the first evening I elected not to fish but sat chatting to my friend Roger, a veteran of all seven Christian Anglers weekend Retreats, who was giving its first outing to a split cane Wondrex. Fishing it in conjunction with a small quill float and using sweetcorn as bait the rod was soon being put to good use with the ubiquitous roach and rudd rewarding his efforts.
The following evening I shared a swim with my brother Andy. Both now in our 50's, this was a recapturing of how we often fished as youngsters- sharing a swim and talking as we stared our at our floats wishing them into submersion. Four decades on from those early days each fish is no longer accompanied by the excited high-pitched exclamation of "I've got one", which is probably just as well, not only for the peace of the pool's other anglers but also because these days our accumulated experience tends to lead to us catching far more fish in a session that we might realistically have dreamt of in those innocent halcyon days of childhood.
Like Roger on the previous evening, I too was christening a new (to me) yet venerably aged cane rod, and my final fish after a succession of the expected roach and rudd was my first ever bream from this particular pond, despite me having fished its waters for the best part of 15 years. The rod bent into a gentle yet pleasing arc and for a few seconds the centre pin sang before the bream rolled over on its side and succumbed in the lazy way that typifies the token resistance that the species are wont to show.
As I tucked my rod back into its canvas bag and shouldered my small fishing satchel the first drops of rain began to fall and I was reminded of what Thoreau wrote about the nature of the pond beside which he briefly lived while attempting to manufacture a life of simplicity: "...it is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky."
I rather like that.
