Creating the perfect pond

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