Abiding by the UK Lockdown rules of travel within the confines of your town, or village, my local pond fitted the bill, it being a short walk from my home. Only two days before the pond had been covered in ice, but overnight rain had flooded the feeder stream, leaving it coloured, but fishable.

A light drizzle still lingered in the air, as I set up my pole at seven metres to fish my usual summer, or winter light waggler rig, mixing up a wet mix of liquidised bread with a dusting of ground carp pellets and a few dozen 2 mm krill pellets, which soon softened to add a bit more attraction. Bait was to be a 6 mm punched bread pellet on a size 16 barbless hook. There was no surface activity, but I was hopeful that the four small balls of feed put out at 9 metres, would soon wake up the resident fish enough to show some interest.

It took less than five minutes for the first ring to radiate out from the float tip and another couple for the tip to sink below the surface from a disinterested rudd. In summer the bait would have been attacked on contact with the water, but after prolonged days and nights of subzero temperatures I was beginning to have my doubts, of the bread punch’s ability to catch fish in the coldest conditions. Confidence renewed, I swung in a small rudd.

A couple of minutes later, the float was gone again with another small rudd swung to hand from the top three pole sections.

Bites were still slow, but the swim was definitely warming up and the sight of pin prick bubbles close to my float got me poised for action, while a series of sharp dips followed by a steady sink away of the tip, saw the elastic pull out from the pole for the first time that afternoon.

This fat crucian carp dashed around stirring up mud until right under my net, then popped up onto the surface ready to be landed. The rudd were getting bigger too.

These rudd were solid and full of fight, lightly hooked they all required the landing net.

My rudd catching rhythm was interrupted by a solid rush, when I hooked into a carp, that stripped out the elastic, boiling up the black mud as it tracked across the pond, while I followed with the pole under tension keeping up the pressure. My wife had arrived minutes earlier and watched as I shifted the pole behind me, before breaking the pole down to the top three for the final run in to the net.

A perfect wild common carp and worth the effort to come out on a cold, dull afternoon. Time to celebrate with a shared KitKat and warming cup of tea, before putting out another couple of feed balls. It was soon too cold for my wife to stand around and she continued her walk to the post box, just missing the capture of one of this pond’s oddities, a crucian-fantail hybrid that got my heart racing again.

Crucian shaped with a powerful rudder, this fan tail motored around in the shallow pond, making netting a guessing game as to where it would appear next, but was eventually intercepted.

There were still plenty of rudd to catch, the slow bites of earlier settling into a predictable sequence.

I scraped up the last of the feed and was running out of holes to punch in my rolled bread. I started to consider packing up soon, although still only 2:30, the clouds had darkened and the temperature was dropping fast. These thoughts evaporated, when I lifted into yet another decent carp, that shot off towards the remains of a lily bed to my right, steadily pulling out elastic, but slowing as the pressure increased, bringing it to a mud boiling halt, before it turned and rushed past me into the open water. It soon rolled in front of me and down to the top three, I guided it into the net.

Another fatty and round like a barrel, the size barbless 16 hook held just inside the skin of its mouth.

A gudgeon and several more small rudd passed the time toward 3 pm, a last decent rudd topping two and a half hours of constant action. There would be tea and a slice of Christmas short bread waiting at home.