We had about 22 goldfish and ghost koi in our pond last year but we seem to
have lost a lot to the big freeze and I've only seen 6 up to now. The pond
has been established for about 10 years and we never feed the fish over the
winter - there's plenty of live crawly-type things in there if they get
hungry :-)

Anyway, now that the warmer weather is here I was expecting to see the fish
swimming around and I've bought a new tub of fish flakes in readiness of
feeding them (they never liked pellets for some reason, only flakes, but
that's a different story). I know that they're in there because I saw them
flitting about when I was getting some debris out of the pond, but they
don't appear to want to be seen anymore - spent 3 hours sitting by the pond
and never saw one of them.

I don't want to just throw flakes in and hope they eat them because that
causes problems if they don't eat it and it rots down, but I don't want them
to get hungry enough that they start to see the tadpoles and froglets as a
food source. Plus, of course, we just like to see them. So, how can I get
them to come and show themselves and to feed as they have done for years
previously?