Fisher's Pond

In the early 60s we regularly fished a beautiful lake on Colden Common, not far from Southampton. Our target was always pike, but it was particularly well known as a place to catch specimen tench.

Apart from the fish, the biggest attraction for us youngsters was that we could afford to rent a good, old, solid, wooden punt between two or three of us. I think it was 10 shillings (now 50p) for the day. Today, they wouldn't dare rent punts to kids like us without a "responsible" grown-up around, but then no-one batted an eye-lid at three 12 year old boys in shorts punting round a lake. I bet there was no insurance involved; I don't remember even signing anything and we didn't have life jackets. Anyway, what could happen to us in such a shallow lake?

Well, for a start, we could sink the punt. Some of them were pretty leaky and you could wobble water in over the gunwales if you got a bit excited; which we did. At one point we had 6 inches of water in the bottom of a punt but we didn't worry about it while we were catching jack-pike on nearly every cast. We were casting sprats into likely looking spots around boat houses and bank-side trees then wobbling them back towards ourselves.  If you bounced them off the surface, you could skid your sprats under the doors and right inside one of the boat houses. We always found fish in there. Two of us hooked fish at the same time and the third boy netted them, but he missed one which dropped off the hooks and fell into the punt where it charged up and down between our legs like a stray torpedo. Needless to say, we jumped about like idiots and a lot more water sloshed in over the sides.

We must have looked quite a sight: Three boys with poles, standing several feet apart, up to their middles in the lake. And we were moving! We poled the drowned punt along the bottom until we reached the nearest shore, which was someone's private garden. We piled out onto the bank and waited, expecting our boat, now lacking any cargo, to bob up at any minute. Obviously, it was made of wood and wood floats, doesn't it? 

Nothing happened for a long time, then there was a gurgling sound and a cloud of mud and bubbles spread from a location near our feet. Ever so slowly, the punt emerged, but only about an inch of it was above the surface. We had to borrow a bucket, get in the lake beside the punt and bale it out almost completely before we could get in it again and resume fishing. I can only think that it must have been late June and not early March because I don't remember being cold.

On our last session there, it was the very end of the season; a great time for pike fishing. We were dropped off at the lake and were soon catching fish, not far from the cottage from where we rented our punt. My partner for the day was Philip Scarr and he was excitedly lifting his second fish into the punt by holding the line rather than using a net. With small pike, this is often a good idea because protruding treble hooks often catch in the mesh of your net. However, without using the net, those same protruding treble hooks often embed themselves in your thumb!

Phillip said it didn't hurt much, so we fished on for an hour or so with the hook firmly embedded in Phillip. It was really just an inconvenience, but he decided to cut the hook out with an old Ever Ready razor blade that I had in my tackle box; very brave, really. But in the end he couldn't do it and neither could I.

We went ashore and phoned for a lift for him to go to A&E, Of course, I went on fishing until Phil came back  a couple of hours later with a nice, fat, clean bandage on his thumb and a damaged hook wrapped in tissue. Apparently the young African doctor on duty knew just what to do. He pushed the hook through the thumb until the barb could be cut off and then pulled it neatly back out the way it had gone in.

When we left the area in 1967 there were rumours that Fisher's Pond was to become a trout fishery. I have no idea what happened then, but the most recent information that I have was that it became a fish farm, providing coarse fish to other fisheries.
In it's day, Fisher's Pond was a dream-like place, with beautiful reflections of  picture-post-card cottages, trees and smudges of brown reeds. We had our Swallows and Amazons adventures there in a world devoid of adults. Pure bliss.