Today I spend a day fishing at an urban pond.
Normally I try to avoid fishing in town since I prefer the solitude of a free flowing river in the outback but circumstances put me at the pond.
I had not fished the place in at least 10 years or more so it would be interesting if I still got the hang of pond fishing.
When I fished the pond way back when it was filled with yellow perch and nice size shiners.
I would fish with a goldbead pheasant tail nymph and use a strike indicator to detect the subtle strikes of the shiners that inhabited the pond.
The pond, home to herons, ducks, geese and fish.
I started early morning when it was chilly and the fog was still hanging in the air.
It was already getting busy at the pond. Several Carp anglers where about and next to
me two senior citizens where fishing with poles for shiners.
The old guys did well; they fished with floats and maggots and caught one little bream
after another.
With bream I mean European bream, a bottom feeding cyprinid.
Fish where active, once in a while you could see splashes in the surface.
It took quite a while before I had my first fish on, perseverance paid off.
A very small yellow perch struck the gold bead nymph.
Monster yellow perch
It did not take long before I had another hit.
This time I had hooked a roach on the nymph.
Roach
When the fog disappeared gray clouds became visible, it would not be the sunny day I had hoped for.
I moved to another corner at the pond and fished spots that yielded fish in the past,
Soon my strike indicator slowly went subsurface.
I struck and something more substantial pulled at the end of the line.
To my surprise I caught a small bream.
Bream (Abramis brama)
Bream where pretty much bottom feeders and not considered a flyrod catch.
A couple of minutes later I hooked another one, apparently these bream had not
red the fishing manual.
Activity slowed towards noon and only a mini yellow perch took interest in the
gold bead nymph.
Time to leave and come back later.
In the evening I revisited the pond. Light rain was falling.
At the shoreline I spotted a few carp milling around.
I fished the pond at several spots but only came up with a mini yellow perch.
Later some guys of our flyfishingclub came fishing at the pond.
They managed one little perch and one bream.
Clouds where getting darker and the light rain turned to heavy rain.
The cold rain and the fading light where convincing enough for everybody to call it a day.
I ended the day with 6 little fish, not bad after 10 years of absence at the pond.
So the numbers where good but the size is something I will have to work on.
Marcel, I was in the NL last year and I saw a lot of these ponds. If I lived in NL I might try them, but really I had no heart to. Why can't the NL fishermen get some nice southern streams set up for trout? Near the Aachen highlands, maybe? Put-and-take ponds are OK for meat, but... On the other hand, if perch (baars?) are taking flies, then fry a few up for me! I remember a few places in NL that could possibly be maintained for nice semi-wild trout water if local authorities could be convinced to try.
I was up in Slovakia last weekend - high water, clear but difficult on the Revuca near Ruzemberok. A few browns and grayling, but probably have to wait at leat two weeks for good fishing. Alpine cold water starts later in the year.
If you have no trout river available you just have to improvise so pond fishing comes into view. I try to avoid urban ponds although some can be quite good and big fish are present. I know ponds where monster pike are lurking in the depths. Fishing the rivers or canals for fly-eating fish species also does the job.
The Aachen highlands or Eiffel region is so well known that all those Dutch people who live in the urban jungle go there. No reason for us to go there. I am not supposed to tell you this but there are a few nice streams near where I live where you can catch trout. Getting a permit is difficult though. A couple of guys from our club fish such a trout stream so we are lucky enough to see the odd trout once in a while.
This weekend I will go to the Harz mountain region in Germany to fish for trout. Nature allways lags a couple of weeks behind schedule there but I expect excellent fishing.
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