Saturday 13 October 2012

River Soar Perch - Are you following me?

Sunday the 29th of September

I managed to persuade 'er indoors that it would be a good idea if I got a few hours fishing in up to dusk and with the wind yet again blowing a gale the reservoir was not an option that appealed. I've known about a stretch of the Soar local to me throwing up some decent fish in recent years and thought I would give it a go.

On arriving on the bank I was almost blown over, along with far too much rain haven't we had some winds this year? I could see that a reed lined bay along to my left was slightly sheltered and it was an area that I had always fancied so it was a no brainer. The tip rod was set up with a blockend feeder and I started to get some bait down into the eight foot deep margin.

It didn't take long for the trusty old worm to attract some finned diners and the tip was soon doing a perchy dance before I bent it into a little fella of a few ounces. The next cast produced his stunt double, and the next, and the next, it seemed that it was my week to be on the babies but I never find fishing the tip boring and was quite happy to keep at them with the hope that maybe big mamma would arrive later to see what all of the commotion was about.

Par for the course

I did catch something different to break the routine but it wasn't a happy occurence, I've been well aware of the red signal crays present in the stretch for some time and have suffered missing hookbaits when carp fishing  over the last few years but I had never seen one on the bank, a twitchy little bite changed all that and in came my first Soar "crab". I really do hate the damn things with a vengeance, they have been in the waterway for a fair few years now but only time will tell if they will become more of a problem. One thing that is for sure is that they are spreading fast and sooner or later they will complete their occupation of the Soar and make it to the Trent, from there the potential for spread is huge.

No matter how hard you reckon you look you won't beat a size 11 on the bonce!

The fading light didn't bring an increase in perch size and by that stage I wasn't really surprised, no little perch with any sense whatsoever would hang around if a big one arrived and as I was constantly catching babies the results told a tale.

2 comments:

  1. Have you tried signals as bait?

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  2. I haven't Dave, have you? It's no coincidence that the rivers infested with the buggers produce some outsize stripeys and chub though is it, it's the future fish stocks that we have to worry about though.

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