"Brian" wrote in message
news
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?


They are probably scared. You may have a predator working your pond.