My Pond
by Peter Stanyer
Several years ago I purchased a large house with it’s own pond
or pit as the farmer next door called it. The Pond is around 60ft by
30ft and was silted up having a depth of only 6 inches.
 A
JCB was hired and 400 tones of silt removed leaving the pond 5ft deep
back to the level of the original clay.
The pond took 17 days to fill with a hose pipe (well there was no ban
on at the time!). I left the pond for the first year just putting in
a few plants.
A friend from work had just had a little baby and decided to fill in
his own garden pond and asked if he could put his fish in mine. I agreed
and forgot all about the fish. I didn’t even know what he put
in.
Last week my neighbour came to visit and as we sat near the pond he
said he could see a large fish just under the surface. I looked but
saw just a ripple in the water. My colleague at work does some fishing
so I asked him to come down and see if the fish has survived the past
8 years. He has all the equipment and set up last Sunday at 10am. I
sat and watched and was not particularly hopeful of him catching anything.
Within ten minutes he shouted me over and had caught a nice goldfish.
(5 ounces). He stated it was some sort of goldfish/orf cross breed
 He
went on to catch some 20 fish in 4 hours of these all being slightly
different, the largest weighing 2lbs.
We were about to pack up when he caught a small roach, then a perch
and two tench.Then with his last cast he shouted me to get the landing
net as he had something a little bigger. Imagine my surprise to when
he landed a 7lb carp
 He
weighed the all the fish at the end of the day giving a total of 27lb.
Just goes to show how well the fish have done. I have decided to invest
in some fishing tackle and try to catch one myself.
 I
asked my friend how many fish he put in all those years ago. He said
5 goldfish, 5 golden orf. 2 carp, a few small roach and about seven
other small fish he couldn’t identify.
Mr Peter Stanyer
Stockport
PS. It's funny how news travels, I am now inundated by people willing
to test how many fish are in the pond!
May 2006
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