Fell Off My Perch

Sat. 13th October 2012

So, the river was on the rise again, following a superb perch day on Thursday - a lovely overcast day with plenty of rain.  The weather was forecast to be sunny spells between showers, and feeling fresh. They were right, and how fresh!

The pool is looking very pretty right now, nestled among the trees, which are in full golden autumn colours.  I opted to fish the same peg.  The opposite bank looks tempting with some fallen trees near an island, but this time I stuck to what I knew.  Must explore...  By lunchtime I had a bucket full of bait and light paternoster livebait rig was fishing beside some lilies.

There were spells of inactivity, punctuated with spells of bites.  Some of the bites were incredible, burying the float and pulling the rod tip around.  But, despite my experiments with hooking arrangements and strike timing, all but one of the bites was missed, bumped or lost.  The fish I did land was a little on the deep-hooked side.  I can only surmise that the missed bites are small fish and resume standard striking procedure and hook arrangements on the basis that it's better to lose a small fish than it is to deep hook a large fish.  But more of my conclusions later.

At around 5pm, the float shot off towards the middle of the pool and a better feeling fish was on.  The scrap was nervous on my part, but needn't have been, the fish was well hooked for once.  The perch was drawn over the net with minimal fuss, just a short dash toward marginal foliage.

An absolutely smashing looking fish - the photo doesn't do it justice due to exposure issues - weighing in at 1lb 14oz.  They're getting bigger.

Next time on the pool I think it is going to be necessary to use larger baits than the 3-4inch baits.  I may also experiment with deadbaits and maybe putting a rod out in deeper water to see what happens.  There are just so many average sized perch that more evasive tactics to avoid so many missed bites are required.

1lb 14oz

Oh, didn't mention it last time, but the carp are a pain.  They are attracted by my relatively heavy feeding of flavoured maggots and come dusk are all over me like a cheap suit.  Must consider a little and often feed pattern rather than the heavy baiting used to concentrate bait fish near the bottom.  At least until the cold weather puts the carp on the backsides.  If it does, that is.

Catch a monster!