Big river perch fishing - a bracing result

After returning to blighty from far sunnier climes I had two weeks of the river season ahead of me and I really wasn't sure what to do with it. I had fully intended to leave the perch alone but it felt a bit late to start getting stuck into something else and, after all, those perch were only getting fatter. Common sense said hold out for another couple of weeks, in all honesty I was becoming a bit bored of the same old style of fishing but soon enough there would be lots of options for something different and so I decided to push myself and stick at the perching. Bored of fishing? Well that isn't really a fair description, ready for a change is more apt, sometimes though persistence is what catches you fish. And so within a day of stepping off of the plane I was once again digging for worms. The downside of the holiday was that my back had once again started to play up and that became more obvious when digging. Sitting static for six hours in a cattle wagon with wings followed by a good dose of sun lounger seizure and another helping of cramped plane to finish off with didn't do me any favours, not what I want just as work should, in theory, pick up after the winter very soon.

My first session was to be a dawn assault, miraculously the weather had settled quite nicely and although the easterley wind was bitter the ground was relatively dry and it was actually possible to get some work done, three hours fishing could be fitted in first though.

Dry, kind of

I had decided on trying a swim new to me a little further along a stretch that I had fished before Xmas, a big willow drooped into the water at various points and along with other now unattached branches protruding up out of the water it looked like perch heaven. I had miscalculated my timings and I was still racing east along the dual carriageway as dawn broke in front of me, not what I wanted but it was too late to do anything about it now.

After several months of fishing in the same manner everything is set up and ready to go in no time and the dropper had deposited a bed of perch breakfast just on the downstream edge of the branches. The thing with early perch sessions is that I tend to think that my chances diminish as times goes on and the day becomes brighter, fishing later in the day the opposite happens and confidence grows. When the tip hadn't moved by 7.30 I was starting to think that my chances were slim, the sky was virtually cloud free and shafts of sunlight beamed through the hedge line behind me. Beneath the tree remained in shade though and thankfully the perch were still happy with that as one picked up my lobworm just before 8am and pulled the quiver tip sharply round. The fight was slow and plodding indicating that something decent was on the end of the line and I wasn't disapointed when a big stripey flank broke the surface, that would do very nicely. Fat as butter in its pre-spawning state the scales pulled around to 3lb 11oz and what a cracking looking fish, I was certainly having one great winters perch fishing.

3lb 11oz

I quickly got another hook bait into position but I was on borrowed time, my cut off point was to be 9am and then I had to leave no matter what. With fifteen minutes to spare the tip knocked a couple of times before sweeping round and I was in again. The fight was a pretty pathetic affair but then that isn't always a bad thing with these perch, the smaller ones tend to fight harder more often than not and that theory was proved right as another good lump of a stripey came to the net, at 3lb 8oz it made for a stunning brace and I didn't grumble at having to pack to get to work after that result.

3lb 8oz

Well I was understandably fired up after that kind of morning. I couldn't get the thought of a return trip out of my mind while I was working and went flat out to get done, I was going back that evening, considering that I was finding the fishing a bit stale I had managed to change my mind pretty quickly! Now the round trip to this particular stretch is probably about fifty miles from home but seeing that I now have a van big enough to sleep in there was nothing to stop me kipping over nearby and fishing at dawn again the next day, that sounded like a plan.

Something told me to try a different swim for the evening, I'm not sure why but I just had a hankering to fish this particular spot. Sometimes these hunches pay off, this time it didn't. The swim was big enough to accomodate two rods and I set them both up on bobbins and alarms, as I had no need to rush off I decided to fish on well into dark and see what occurred. The hot period at dusk came and went without a sign of a bite but I stuck to the plan and kept the baits in position. Perhaps an hour after dark the left hand rod gave a couple of bleeps before the bobbin cracked into the rod quick time. I struck almost instantly and the rod was wrenched down hard as the fish felt the resistance, whatever this was it wasn't a perch. I struggled for maybe thirty seconds to gain some kind of control but I couldn't do a thing with it and inevitably the fish ploughed straight into the nearby tree before snapping my hooklink. I'd like to know what that was, possibly a big chub or maybe even a carp perhaps, I'll never know.

Nothing else happened during the evening and after a cosy night in the van I was up at 5.15 am and stuck the kettle on for a quick brew before dawn. I've been accused of being mad for stopping out all night without a rod in the water but to me it beats getting up even earlier at home, losing more sleep and getting moaned at for waking the mrs up too, it's a no brainer. After packing up the previous night I had decided to try a swim that had produced a few fish for me before which was situated close to a car park further downstream but on pulling up I found a carp angler already in situ so that plan was scuppered. With no time to mess around I headed back to the same swim I had caught yesterdays brace from and got stuck in.

It was tough going, not the slightest indication on the tip from dawn till 9am. I was just about to consider calling it a day when I hooked a fish which gave me the right run around, as I said often the smaller ones fight harder and at 2lb 8oz that again proved the point. I pushed my luck and gave it another hour but that was my lot. Some you win some you lose but one thing's for certain, if you don't try you definitely won't win.