Winter finally arrived in my neck of the woods with a couple of frost. Not bad for late November. Quite often the weather can be less kind with good frosts in October. We had also had a fair amount of cold rain which filled the rivers. This cold water is never very good for the fishing as this was the first cold snap we have had.

Anyhow with the rivers running high and cold it was time to fetch out the perch rods. The ones I normally use are the 0.5t/c fox duo rods. These are just fine for playing good size perch on light tackle. Having said that they can deal with any marauding carp that are often picked up on prawns.

I normally use 6lb main line and 4lb 12oz reflo hook link line. This has a very small diameter.

Fox Duo half pound test curve rods and Shimano ST4000 reel perfect for big perch

My weights are very light at 10g with Solar large plastic running ring. This ensures that there is little resistance as the line passes through the ring. I do like to use the Korum quick change connectors. They are so useful when changing hook lengths.

Business end

The hooks have been Mustad demon circle hooks. These are so good at preventing the deep hooked perch. You just lift into the bite and 99% of the times the perch is hooked in the scissors. They are really great hooks. My mate Andy was the one who put me onto these.

So that’s the rigs sorted. For the last year I have been using some homemade bobbins that are very light and again keeps resistance to a minimum. Although on some perch takes you wouldn’t think that this was a problem. They are made from the balls of foam that are used to pop up dead baits for pike. I’ve got two sizes, these are the small ones and I’ve got some larger ones.

Home made bobbins

I had been doing a little detective work to find out about local lakes that have some good perch. As I sure most of you know perch cycles come and go in lakes and if you can catch the best times you are in for a great time. It seemed that I had missed the boat for a couple and they were past their best.

However I had been following one lake where the perch have been growing larger year on year. Some now topped the 3lb mark. Not monsters however with the lake being just 15 minutes drive away it was worth fishing at last light midweek when the rivers are out of sorts.

So it was here where I would start on a very cold grey rainy day. The lake is quite small with plenty of small fish of all sorts, plus it held some signal crayfish. It was probably these that the perch were feeding on and hence growing fat in the process. The lake had an island which looked good as a patrol route for the perch and it was here I thought that I would start. However half way up one of the banks there was a trailing branch in the water from a willow tree. This looked like a great structure and place where the perch could ambush any unsuspecting prey.

I just didn’t know if I was doing the right thing or not. So casting out parallel to the branch with two rods stationed in two different area’s offering prawns as bait. So with these in place I had about 2.5 hrs to see if I could tempt a perch or two. I sprayed maggots over the top of the baits every few minutes.

It was cold and rainy with a chilled north wind hitting my face. Not the most pleasant of places to be, but with thoughts of a big perch whirling in my mind this didn’t matter.

I had a few line bits from passing carp as time drifted by. Then as if by magic the bobbin rose steadily to the butt ring and I lifted into a lovely perch that gave me a very spirited fight on the light tackle. It was almost dark as I lifted it from the water. It looked to be about 2lbs not the biggest of perch however no blanking for me. Since it was almost dark I didn’t take the camera out I just took a quick snap on my phone.

Nothing else came along as the light faded into darkness.

So with the temperatures going as low as -3c my thoughts a couple of days later turned once again to perch fishing. This time I was heading off to another lake that normally produces plenty of perch to 3lbs and a good sprinkling of 2lb fish.

It’s about 50 miles from home so I set off in thick fog and arrived a little later than I would have liked however with no one else on the fishery I headed to a swim that seemed to produce for me last year.

I soon had everything sorted and cast out with the exact method and end tackle as the previous session.

Soon another angler Alan came along for a chat. He had fished it twice the week before and had caught a staggering number of perch with just a few over 2lb with the biggest being 2lbs 10oz. We had a good chat about everything about fishing. I had a few lifts on the bobbin however no real takes. I think I had missed the low light early morning feeding spell.

Mike the owner of the fishery came along and still more chatting and a few more lifts on the bobbins but nothing positive.

Alan and Mike soon were on their way and I was now concentrating on the job at hand. I decided due to little action I would reduce the bait size to see if this made a difference. It sure did!

Prawns

From 9.45am to 16.30 I caught 17 perch and lost 3 others. 2 of the perch may have gone 2lbs however not wanting to miss out on feeding fish I didn’t weigh the last few as sport was fast and furious and I wanted to continue fishing and not messing around with scales etc on smaller fish.

Plenty of small perch of just over 1lb

I was spraying maggots out every few minutes and you could see all the smaller bait fish coming up for the maggots. I was assuming that the perch were not far behind them.

Plenty of small fish present

It looked as though the 2lb perch that were present last year had not shown today. It looks as though the cycle is just starting again on this lake.

Mike the owner came along for the last hours fishing just to see how things were going. He was fantastic in helping me speed up the process of hooking playing and landing perch. He even landed a common carp of 8lbs or so while I baited and recast for perch.

Mike is unusual in that he can see the perch as a great benefit to his fishery and plans to net out some of the smaller perch and transfer them to the other 3 lakes he has. His vision is to create a big perch fishery for the winter. This is very refreshing coming from a fishery owner. I can only hope that his vision comes to fruition in the future.

The last couple of fish were near 2lbs I guess, so we completed a trophy shot.

Couple of perch short of the 2lb mark

Alan had been fishing another lake and had 2 perch to 1lbs 12oz however the carp had been on a feeding bonanza and he suffered through this.

So a great day out in super company.