My son Jeff was on the far side of the pond. He was teasing a Tiny Torpedo across the surface to take small but eager bass. I was fly casting a tiny cork bug to land an occasional bass and lots of slab-sided bluegills. It was our private pond ? almost.
That was a few years ago. We had not won the lottery or bought Microsoft early to enable us to become landed and ponded gentry. Instead, we traveled the county, found ponds, the adjacent farm house, and politely asked permission to fish.
Answers ranged from “no” to “maybe later” to “I?ll think about it” to “yes.” On this pond, we got a “yes.”
There are at least “several thousand” state-stocked ponds that have this fishing potential, according to Bob Lunsford, Maryland Department of Natural Resources director of inland fisheries. There are lots more if you add those privately stocked.
Pond owners can request and get fish from the DNR upon paying $10 per species, regardless of the number needed. Typical stockings include largemouth bass and bluegill. About 75 to 80 ponds are stocked annually from state hatcheries at Unicorn and Cedarville, according to Lunsford.
The pond owner signs an agreement that in return for the brother-in-law price on fish, that a “reasonable amount of controlled public fishing (left to the discretion of the owner) is permitted.”
That?s where we come in. We are the part of the equation that allows the state to feel good about stocking while the happy land owner gets preacher-price fish. We are happy with almost-private fishing.
This is a possibility that any angler can explore, making sure that politeness, courtesy and respect for the pond, land and land-owner are paramount.
A few days ago fishing buddy Ed Russell and I were repeating this scenario, cruising back roads of Baltimore and Harford counties for pond prospects. We found possibilities (two ponds on one farm ? one good and the other better), got a brush off, could not find the landowner of others and suspected that we were missing a lot that were hidden from the road. In other words, it was a typical day of fishing for farm ponds ? tough but one with future promise and possibilities. Ed found two more on a later pond sortie.
But we haven?t quit. We?re still looking for a couple of ultimate farm ponds for our own “private” fishing Mecca. Hey, we know they are out there ? somewhere. With a couple of thousand available, we just have to find a few of the right ones.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally-known sportsman and award-winning writer on hunting, fishing and the outdoors, and he has more than 20 books to his credit. He can be reached at [email protected]
