Commercial perch fishing, or was it roach...

The next stop on Thomo's magical mystery tour was to be a commercial fishery that Leo had come across a year or so previously with the intention of catching a few perch and which was fairly prolific. I was well aware that I was flitting from one thing to another but by this stage I had come to accept that I just had to grab what I can until the weather settles down and be happy with a bite or two whilst praying for the flaming rain to stop.

As you might expect it was indeed raining as we arrived just before first light and unloaded two sets of kit onto a piece of grass that was more fluid than solid, it actually turned out that that was a dry piece compared to the track that we trudged along in a slip sliding manner to reach the lake. The wind was piling in to the first bit of water that we came to and it took little persuading for both of us to carry on walking towards the calmer water. We passed a couple of blokes with shotgun's in arm who remarked that we must be mad as it was going to rain all day, not what my forecast had told me and I hoped that my version was the right one.

Leo had told me that prawn was the way to go on this place, fished close in against the reeds and topped up with a flick of maggot every now and then. That sounded good to me, it's always nice to break out a float for a change and in fact I'm starting to find it becoming a more regular thing and I'm enjoying it. Many of the platforms were submerged and I plumped for a spot with a bit of bank to one side giving me access to a substantial bed of reeds. I decided to give the centrepin it's second ever sight of water just because it needs using to be honest and coupled up with my 14ft carp float rod it was just a case of an under arm swing and the bait was positioned a foot or so out from the foliage, game on.

You know you are bored when you start taking pictures of a motionless float

Well bar the occasional small twitch of the float the only entertainment I had for the next couple of hours was in watching Leo attempt to burn off the Xmas calories by moving swim, twice, well it was either the fitness regime or a case of the grass being greener. The grass may have been green but the perch certainly weren't, or more likely were elsewhere as by early afternoon neither of us had a stripe to our name and I decided that it was time to make a move myself. As I squelched past Leo I made a sarcastic remark about his backside being welded to his seat as he had managed to stay put for a couple of hours but he assured me that he was going to see the day out in that spot. I went another hundred yards along the bank and started the process again, within ten minutes something caught my eye to my left, it was Leo's brolly being folded up. Two minutes later he was passing me loaded up with kit muttering something about kicking his maggots over and that it was a sign, he was right, it was a sign of being a clumsy git.

As Leo toddled off round to the far bank and sat directly in my line of sight behind the float sitting motionless in my margin so I couldn't help but see what looked suspiciously like a strike not long after he had cast out, and then another, and then I got a text saying that it was a bite a chuck, I was off round there like a shot.Leo had actually already surveyed the area for a prospective move earlier in the day but had discounted it due to the waves rolling in and the fact that the bank was virtually submerged but there was a strip of dry ground just big enough to accomodate me in a swim just a few yards from Leo. From the first cast my float was knocking and bobbing almost constantly, you wouldn't believe that the fish could be so concentrated in a small area would you but they were, it was like fishing a different lake. It was obvious that most of the bites were from smaller fish than we were after though Leo hooked a small'ish perch early on. I was missing quite a few bites and had the option of scaling down the tackle to try and hook them or sticking with the bigger bait for a perch, I stuck at the perch plan and increased my hook to a size 8 with a slightly larger piece of prawn attached. Within ten minutes I hooked a fish but would you believe it, it was a roach, talk about reverse thinking. It was a nice fish though and after both guessing wether or not it would make a pound we decided that it had to be weighed, the scales made it 14oz's which was bigger than I'd had while fishing for roach a few days earlier.

Desperate times!

My float continued to bob almost as much even with the bigger bait and hook and a couple more suicidal roach were banked while Leo netted two more perch up to mid two pounds in weight, not the session that we had envisaged yet again but we had escaped the Xmas mania for a few hours if nothing else.