Checking the health of Rainbow Trout in my pond

Hello there welcome back if you checked out my previous video about my pond you'll realize that it is now very very clear and I was mentioning that I wanted to check on the health of the fish obviously I can't just put a net in and scoop them out I have to catch them I've got two options to catch them I can either use the electro fishing kit Um... but whilst that might be effective in shallower ponds it isn't very effective in this pond Ideally, the body of water needs to be about 2.5 metres, which is about 8 feet deep. This one is nearer 6 metres deep. It's way too deep for the electrical field to have much of an effect. So, I'm going to fish for the trout with a barbless hook on my extremely small 6ft 6, weight 2, hardy, sovereign fly rod with a flyweight reel. It's a weight 2 line. And I really use this in the summer on the river when I'm creeping up on fish. It's a real beautiful rod to use. So I'm going to use that. It's a nice light rod. It's going to cope with whatever's in here because the fish aren't that big. Now that is a black muddler. It's a very sparsely dressed one and it's got a tiny little head. But it looks very much like a trout pellet, so I don't think it'll be long before I can actually catch a trout on that. Because I do feed them every day on pellets, and they haven't been fed yet today. It's a lovely light rod, barbless hook, so the stress to the fish should be minimal. And it looks like the sun's getting out as well, which is a bonus. So let's chuck this in, see what we'll get. That's the fly out, very, very easily. Look at the condition of that. Very good condition. I think we'll catch one more, and if the condition is as good as that one we've just caught, we'll call it a day. Now muddlers are meant to float, or at least the front end is anyway, and then you pull it back, little short jerks, and it boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, goes like that, and it pops in the water. This one's covered in slime now, so it's actually sinking, but I'm not bothered. It'll still catch in here. Now there is actually one fish, one big trout left in here of a previous time that I stocked the pond. It has to be knocking on for five to six pound in weight. So I'm kind of hoping that I don't connect with that one because this light gear just will not handle a fish of that size. And there's a lot of snags here with all the platforms and everything. Water's so clear I can see that one coming up for it. Check that out. That's a really good looking fish. Nice big tail on it as well. You know, it is just a farmed fish, but its shape is absolutely beautiful. Now you're probably feeling as if you want me to catch more fish and just hammer them out, but... That's not what they're in there for, really they're just pets, I just like to grow them, see how big they can get and from what I see today they're doing very very well and just to show them that there's no hard feelings I'll throw a little bit of food in for them. It's early January now, 2017 and it's very very cold here up in northeast England. I think the temperature must have dropped four or five degrees just since I started filming this video. As soon as that sun disappears over the horizon the temperature just plummets. But the fish are still feeding well. This big body of water holds quite a lot of heat. So all we need is a few sunny days and this warms up and the fish feed really, really well all year. Now fishing for rainbow trout in places like this isn't my idea of fun. Because it's just simply too easy, they're in an enclosed space, there's no real current, there's no real, well I was going to say there's no real skill. There is skill to it to a point when you're fishing a reservoir, you've still got to match the hatch, you've still got to locate the fish, attract the fish, recognise what they're feeding on and so on, but to me the real thrill of fishing is river fishing. And I can't wait to get back on the river. The season starts here 22nd of March and I don't normally go out at the beginning of the season. I normally give it three or four weeks depending on the weather. Let a little bit of fly life get active because I tend to only fish dry fly. I like to see what the fish are doing and I would imagine that there's quite a lot of people watching this video are also waiting for the beginning of the fishing season. it can't come soon enough because i absolutely love fishing the river and i hope to bring you more river fishing videos this year i may even be getting a drone as well specifically for landscape shots flying up rivers and so on so i know i say this every year but i do hope to make more videos about fishing the rivers than i did the previous year i think i only put three or four out last year it can't be hard to beat that so we'll see what happens hopefully we'll get some good fish And you'll come along with me and enjoy it as much as I do. Thanks very much for watching. See you next time. I've got a couple of trout. I was just checking the condition of them, you know. Oh, they're in canny nick. All right.