River Derwent perch - a change of scenery

Friday the 2nd of December
Last winter I had been tipped off about a stretch of the River Derwent that might be worth a go for the perch and decided to have an exploratory trip up there today. After a fair old walk from the car park I arrived at the area in question and could see straight away why it would be a likely perch area, in fact it was hard to know where to start as there were more swims with overhanging marginal tree's than without, the first thing I look for in a perch swim on the rivers.

With time limited I dropped into a lovely looking swim squeezed in between two such tree's and featuring a small back eddy lingering at the downstream edge of the upstream branches. Half a dozen lobs were chopped and dropped into the eddy followed by a 3 swan link with another "snake" attached, my method of hooking lobworms is almost always to nip off the tail and thread the hook in before coming out of the worm after maybe a centimetre, this way you more often than not avoid the worm doubling up on itself and masking the hook point. Almost instantly the soft quiver tip gave a little rattle before steadily pulling down towards the water and a fish was hooked, not quite the monster I was looking for though at nearer to 4oz's than 4lbs! Next cast and the same again and this one was no bigger, in fact neither were the next dozen or so and I came to the conclusion that it was very unlikely that a big perch was present else these small ones would have scarpered quickly before becoming lunch, however dusk was fast approaching and a move would be pushing my luck with the time available and so I persevered in the hope that the small fish activity might just attract something more sizeable. Unfortunately that didn't happen and the little uns were still throwing themselves at me as the light fell from the sky and the isotopes became essential to seeing bites. Nevertheless it was certainly a promising looking area and one that deserved a return trip or two.