Perching on a commercial
Andy phoned me to ask if I wanted to fish for perch close to him on a commercial fishery. I’m unsure why they are called commercial, as all fisheries are commercial in that they are run for profit and at a cost. So with a spare Friday we headed off to fish there. There are a couple of key places to fish and by the time we arrived these were taken by carp anglers so we had to settle for second best.
Bait was a king prawn coloured red on a free running lead which gave little resistance when the perch took the bait. That’s if they took the bait.
After about 1.5hrs fishing I had a take where the bobbin jerked up to the top and lifting into the fish produced nothing. Andy told me that it was a typical bite from a 4lb perch……..can’t put the reply here but it wasn’t polite. I knew he was joking but I took it in good nature and threw him in the lake.
Next bite was from the same rod and this time the free spool buzzed, as the line raced off through the alarm which was in a one tone mode. This was no perch but a carp. On the light 6lb line and 1lb T/C rod the fight was more prolonged than on normal carp tackle.
So after quite a while the fish was in the net.
- 13lbs 5oz carp
So with this fish of 13lbs 5oz, another 2 hours didn’t produce anything else. We tried another lake for the perch. Andy had a couple of nice carp around double figures which kept things moving along but with the cloud clearing we knew that chances were diminishing and that with the sun coming out carp became the main target. Andy does have a way with floater fishing and he wanted to show me a trick or two in catching them.
So Andy caught a good few where I only had the two. It was great fun though. I will be returning for the perch before very long and see if a 3lber will come my way.
