October 13th 2001 Carp and Orfe Stocking

We were invited to net a large garden pond by the Environment Agency, the owners were concerned that the water was clouded and they wanted to have clear water.  It was believed that large amounts of small carp, orfe, rudd and roach were churning up the water.  These fish were free and all we had to do was borrow some nets and go and get them.  The pond was in Badby, near Daventry.  It was about 30 metres long and about 10 metres wide and no one really knew what it turn up.

The Badby Pond, would it turn up any golden nuggets?

Well we did catch about 300 fish but most of them were two inches long, either being carp (both mirrors and commons) or some kind of orfe thing that may have been an immature rudd hybrid.  It was all a bit hard to tell to be honest!

Anyway we thanked the owners and drove back to Bainton with two tanks of fish with the Oxygen bubbling away.  There was however about 20 fish that looked at first like crucian carp of about 6oz.  But some of them had big fan tails, these were brown goldfish or again some king of weird hybrid.  Stunningly attractive fish and very tame.  Just have a look at the gallery below.  All the fish were stocked into the New pit.  I would estimate the stocking as follows:-

200 Carp of about 2 inches.

100 Orfe type things of about 2 inches.  The jury is still out on them.

20 Rudd of about 6oz

20 Fantail Crucians (goldfish to you and me)

All the fish are very tame and respond well to slices of bread on the surface, they also follow you around the lake hoping you will feed them.

And my personal favorite……………..

So we went in search of Golden Nuggets, and came home with Goldfish