With news that the Lockdown travel restrictions are to continue for months to come, a few enquiries confirmed that nowhere local was fishing due to the continued cold weather. I had experienced this the previous week on my local river, when I struggled to connect with fish, bites being reduced to nibbles. Scaling down to a size twenty hook and 4mm punch of bread, while putting an extra shot under the stick float, had given me something to strike at, but my tally after an hour was five tiny roach, two sticklebacks and an old sock. I packed up and returned home. The same swim a year before had put several chub to over a pound, with quality roach in my net.

Frosty mornings and glorious afternoons have become the norm lately and with the mist beginning to lift this week after lunch, I decided to try the pond within walking distance of my home, although the gloomy responses from a couple of other anglers around the pond did not lift my hopes.

I settled myself down at the top end of the pond and made up a shallow mix of feed, just 4 oz of liquidised bread, dusted with ground carp pellets and a red spice additive. The pond is about two feet deep above mud and a sloppy feed works well here. There is a post that sticks up in line with the pole line and I fed several small balls my side of it. I set up a cut down waggler rig that only takes three No 4 shot, with a size 16 hook and a 6mm punch of bread and cast in. The float went down immediately and a small rudd was swung to hand.

This was already an improvement on my expectations and several rudd later there was a solid resistance on the strike and a small crucian carp was skidding across the surface toward the landing net.

More rudd, then a big gudgeon cartwheeled toward the net. This pond is so shallow, that most fish break the surface when hooked.

These gudgeon are massive, a remnant of the days when a brook ran through the pond, the brook culverted away, but flowing through in times of flood, the pond acting as a balance pond.  The float kept going under with more rudd slideaways, while a bobbing bite produced crucian number two.

More feed brought a flurry of gudgeon, each one a couple of ounces and out fighting the rudd.

These gudgeon seem to have taken over from the small tench that were almost a nuisance a few years ago. Just when they were getting to a decent size, they disappeared. Maybe they are feasting on bloodworm all day and are no longer interested my bread, hopefully to reappear as two pounders in the future.

This was my last crucian, I had put in the last of my feed and pinprick bubbles appeared around my float before I lifted into this little battler. Putting the float back over the bubbles, an even bigger gudgeon took the punched bread, giving a good impression of a crucian as it scudded across the bottom.

I reckon this one was at least three ounces, maybe there is a record to be caught in this pond?

A chilling east wind now began to ruffle the surface along the pond toward me and bites became difficult to spot, watching the line at the pole tip being the best indicator, the rudd moving off with the bait.

The wind dropped again, but so did the temperature, the pond going to flat calm as mist began to form over the surface. The other anglers had left already and decided that I would have one last cast, the float slowly sinking away, to be met by an eruption on the strike as a good fish fought back hard. I thought that it was a better crucian and was surprised to see a good rudd come to the surface at the landing net.

I now gave it another fifteen minutes, just in case there were a few more decent fish around, but his small rudd was my last fish.

  The bites were still coming, but I had had my fun, the bread punch again finding plenty of fish.

From this swim in February a few years ago, I had over 20 lb of common and crucian carp, but that had been a very mild winter, this year I was happy for small mercies and went home with a smile on my face.