Ted Hughes Fishing Diaries

[Stathamender]

Interesting. Hughes was an early campaigner on pollution and water quality. This is discussed, along with the work of another writer/angler Brian Clarke, in this rather academic piece here: http://www.concentric-literature.url.tw ... ater/4.pdf (NB following this link downloads a pdf file). Apparently when people like us are

also creative writers, culture can intervene on behalf of nature; that is, when nature is thus constructed for literary readers, culture becomes nature’s own means of helping the human animal adjust to its place within the natural world.

As we used to say back in the 60s 'Heavy, man, heavy'. I believe Hughes first became concerned about the issues when the 'Ox-bow Lake' itself was polluted by a run off from silage, killing all the fish there.

[Stathamender]

There's a difference between 'fish pond' and 'fishing pond' maybe. Hughes in Pike https://poetryarchive.org/poem/pike/ refers to

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,
Whose lilies and muscular tench
Had outlasted every visible stone
Of the monastery that planted them -

A monastery fish pond would not be for fishing but for a larder of fish to eat. I sometimes wonder if this how tench and carp (and maybe even bream) arrived here first, either with the monasteries or the Romans before them. It may be that these names for vatious pools have survived over time and denote a place originally for fish storage.