Fishing Golden Pond

This season I want to fish more places in New York City.  So, I fished the first Kettle Pond
I ever fished in the city.  This pond has several species of fish but I come here to try and catch the carp.  I've never seen any big  fish here.  I think that is because of the size of this pond.

Normally I fish this side of the pond.  Today I chummed three spots where I know fish hold.

The lily pads are a new item here at the pond .  My  first fish ran to these lily pads and buried itself beneath them.  The worst thing you can do in a situation like that is to panic.  I've learned to stop fighting the carp in this situation.  I give it some slack line.  Often the fish relaxes too.   After a few minutes, I begin to slowly hand strip the fish back towards me.  Given the opportunity, the fish will help you untangle itself from the lily pads.

The swans are new to the neighborhood too.

Looking east to west

All carp I caught had to be navigated through this field of lily pads.  I fought the carp in the open areas and as they grew tired, I lifted their heads up so that they would not become caught in the pads.
And I proceeded to"float them" over the lily pads to the shoreline.

The carp were swarming in the area I baited with chum.  So much so that even the turtles
were not able to drive the carp out of the feeding zone.

It was still light so I wet my line again.  At this point, the carp were eating in such a frenzy that they were feeding on top of the water.  I hooked my second carp on a fly that resembled bread floating on the  surface.

I caught my third fish about ten minutes after I landed the second.  It was hot and heavy as daylight was leaving.  A small crowd had gathered as I pulled the third carp out of the water.   When I released the last carp I noticed how warm the water felt.  This may have contributed to the fish being so active.

All three carp fought hard but I believe that because of  experience I was able to keep control of the fish and not lose control of the carp.  This was not a cakewalk.  The carp wrapped line around things
they went beneath the lily pads etc.

One of the things that contributed to my success this evening was the fact that I had fished here a few days earlier.  I lost the first two fish that evening.  One fish took my softbait of waxworms and the second was able to loose my bread fly after it ran towards the pads

Kettles are fluvioglacial landforms occurring as the result of blocks of ice calving from the front of a receding glacier and becoming partially to wholly buried by glacial outwash. Glacial outwash is generated when streams ofmeltwater flow away from the glacier and deposit sediment to form broad outwash plains called sandurs. When the ice blocks melt, kettle holes are left in the sandur. When the development of numerous kettle holes disrupt sandur surfaces, a jumbled array of ridges and mounds form, resembling kame and kettle topography.^[1] Kettle holes can also occur in ridge shaped deposits of loose rock fragments called till.^[2]

Kettle holes can form as the result of floods caused by the sudden drainage of an ice-dammed lake. These floods, called jökulhlaups, often rapidly deposit large quantities of sediment onto the sandur surface. The kettle holes are formed by the melting blocks of sediment-rich ice that were transported and consequently buried by the jökulhlaups. It was found in field observations and laboratory simulations done by Maizels in 1992 that ramparts form around the edge of kettle holes generated by jökulhlaups. The development of distinct types of ramparts depends on the concentration of rock fragments contained in the melted ice block and on how deeply the block was buried by sediment.^[3]

Most kettle holes are less than two kilometres in diameter, although some in the U.S. Midwest exceed ten kilometres. Puslinch Lake in Ontario, Canada, is the largest kettle lake in Canada spanning 160 hectares (400 acres). Fish Lake in the north-central Cascade Mountains of Washington State, USA, is 200 hectares (490 acres).^[4]

A kettle in the Isunngua highland, central-western Greenland

The depth of most kettles is less than ten meters.^[5] In most cases, kettle holes eventually fill with water, sediment, or vegetation. If the kettle is fed by surface or underground rivers or streams, it becomes a kettle lake. If the kettle receives its water from precipitation, the groundwater table, or a combination of the two, it is termed a kettle pond or kettle wetland, if vegetated. Kettle ponds that are not affected by the groundwater table will usually become dry during the warm summer months, in which case they are deemed ephemeral.^[6]