Sunday 4 March 2012

The early perch catches the worm


Thursday the 1st of March

The increase in work was really starting to take a toll on me by Wednesday, it's the same every year, work slackens off before xmas and picks up at the end of February, in those two months I stuff my face full of festive goodies and become generally unfit, when I start working again for a few weeks I feel like I've been run over by a bus! I must admit that fishing at every opportunity wasn't helping, rushed or missed meals aren't a good idea especially when you need to keep your energy up but thats what tends to happen I'm afraid. Nevertheless I found myself once again in the position of having to give the wife some bad news, I was going to get up at 5.30 the next day to go perching before work.

Things were going smoothly until I was about to get onto the motorway and realised that my phone was on the kitchen worktop, going back to fetch it wasted ten minutes and the journey was further slowed by thick fog hanging over the Trent and Derwent valleys and so I found myself walking along the bankside track in the half light of dawn rather than in darkness as planned.
The best part of the day
 I decided to try a different swim from last week but other than that the procedure was just the same, four droppers of maggot and two of worm followed shortly afterwards by a succulent helping of finest Leicestershire ground snake attached to a hook big enough to make a matchman faint. With the mist swirling around I had high hopes that the morning feeding spell might be extended somewhat but it took a while for the first bite to develop, the worm had been twitched through the swim a good half dozen times before there was a knock, then another, then a knock follow by the tip slowly bending round, unmissable. The perch came to the top straight away and turned under the surface giving me a good idea that it was a nice one before descending back down into the depths and plodding around for a minute or two whilst giving that characteristic head bang which always makes me think that the hook is about to pop out. The hook thankfully stayed just where I intended it to and in the net she went, another cracking looking stripey that pulled the spring round to 3lb 3oz's.

In went another couple of droppers of grubs and I started working the worm again, bar a couple of very small taps that almost certainly were small fish all was quiet and as the morning rush hour started to recede I was expecting to call it a day with just the one fish. The magic "one last cast" did its stuff for me though and gave me another perch of 2lb 11oz's long after the sun had burnt off the mist, sending me off back to the van almost content to be going to work. Now I know things were starting to get to me!

An interesting thing about these perch, take a look at the one I caught last week here 3lb 5oz and compare it to this one Phil caught in Leo's blog here 3lb 4oz without a shadow of a doubt the same fish, Phil caught it on the Monday and I caught it 3 days later, nothing particularly unusual there until I say that the two captures were a measured 300 yards apart!

2 comments:

  1. Hi Rob
    The splits in the Perch's tail fin look identical - good spot. Really good looking Perch, im hoping to catch a few in the coming weeks from a stillwater.

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  2. And the curvature in the dorsal, Leo spotted it and I didn't believe it until I looked myself, I would never have believed they were so nomadic, well that one is anyway!

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