Creating the perfect pond

Open water is a magnet for ducks and all manner of wildlife, as Graham Downing finds when he restores his two flight ponds

- Graham Downing

Fifty years ago, my father and a bunch of his shooting mates bought a bit of marsh. They realised quickly that, while there was plenty of wildfowling action there when the winter floods were up, the key to providing some sport in the early part of the season was creating a duck magnet.

To do this, they needed to establish what would become a decent-sized patch of open water when the neighbouring marshes were dry. So they hired a man with a dragline, pulled out a pond roughly 80 yards by 40 yards, with a long island in the middle, planted some willows around the outside and some Norfolk reeds in the shallows. Then they waited to see what happened.

It took a couple of years before the bare soil greened up, but by that time the ducks had already taken a liking to the new pond. Modifications followed: a feeder channel to allow water in and an exit channel to allow it out again, sluices to control the flow and hides dug into the ground and lined with pallets.

I did a good deal of my early and formative duck shooting around that pond and it is still there. The pallet hides rotted away long ago, the willows have grown up and some have fallen over, and it has been cleaned out many times over the years by a succession of digger drivers, but the basic shape of the pond still exists. And it still provides some wonderful early-season shooting. Indeed, I shot a very satisfactory bag of four mallard and a gadwall there at morning flight on 1 September last year.

It serves to underline the old rule of duck shooting that if you have water and others around you do not, then you stand the best possible chance of shooting ducks.

Ideal position