4th January 2013 and perch fishing.

Well what happened there then!

Christmas just flew by and the next thing it’s the new year. I had planned to fish the river today but a call from Andy and Mike saying they were going to fish for perch had me changing my plans the night before. The river condition was betwixt chub and barbel and perching sounded good to me.

So plans made I arrived to find I was the very first person on the fishery. The conditions were perfect for big perch, cloudy overcast and warm. The only negative was that the carp and tench were doing cartwheels and feeding like they do in May. The temperature  was 10c day and night perfect for them to be very active.

Mike and Andy arrived and knowing Andy he puts me in the best swims where I always fail to catch. I let them settle first then walked to the other end of the lake far away from them. This was the first time on the lake for me but things were pretty much uniform depth with few features.

So the plan was to fish about 10m out. Bait was to be lob worm on one rod and the wonderful jumbo prawn on the other.

Jumbo prawn at the ready

I was feeding with pieces of prawn and red maggots. Not too many pieces of prawns.

I kept on getting line bites from carp and missed a couple when I stuck into nothingless.

Soon though (11am) the ledgering rod with prawns was away and the line flew off the reel. I struck into a perch that kept on shaking it’s head. I had very little idea how large it was so I played it gingerly. It certainly wasn’t a carp.

Soon a very nice perch lay in the net. After weighing Andy took a a couple of photo’s for me.

2lbs 11oz

So a good start to the day.

Then after losing another perch on prawn things went quite. I changed the float rod over to prawn too.

Then at about 2pm I caught another one this time much smaller at 1lb 10oz.

1lbs 10oz

Following on a chap moved in opposite me and caught a couple with the largest going 3lbs 6oz so the water has potential. In fact it has produced some 4lbers so lets keep our fingers crossed that something over 3lbs turns up next time.

Mike and Andy caught loads of tench and the odd carp……nice to be fishing during the summer!