I sit very close to the rods so I’m able to strike quickly if necessary.


Commercial stillwater perch love prawns.


could tell was a perch from all the head shaking it was doing. I soon had it in the net and could see it wasn’t a monster, but at 1 lb 8 oz it saved a blank and was welcome. Mike had spent the last two-and-a-half hours


of the session without a bite but had still had a cracking day with over a dozen specimen perch. I decided there and then that I had to come back


very soon to try and catch something a bit bigger, and it was only a few days later that I was once again heading around the A3 and then down the back roads to the fishery. This time I’d brought my dad along to increase the chances that one of us would catch. The weather forecast had been for overcast


conditions, but it turned out to be fairly bright and freezing cold with a chilly wind blowing. I started off in the swim where Mike had caught


The fishing was slow on my second session and this 1 lb 13 oz fish was the best I managed.


than relying on the buzzer to sound. My Shimano 5000 size Baitrunners were loaded


with 5 lb line with 4 lb line to a size 6 Drennan Carbon Specimen hook for the hook link. I really like this pattern of hook for perch as they are plenty strong enough, with a reasonable gape, and not too heavy. I find that if the hook is too heavy it is far more likely to tear out during the fight as the membrane in a perch’s mouth where you sometimes hook them is very fragile. The barb was completely crushed flat, and on


the rod I was going to fish with worm I added an artificial maggot, or you can use a small piece of elastic band, this is used to keep the bait from wriggling off the hook. The feeder was filled with a mixture of red maggots and liquidised prawns, and broken up prawns. Balls of liquidised prawn and a constant stream of maggots was fed over both baits. One rod was swung out just off of a bush and the other where the margin shelf dropped off and the lake became maybe a foot deeper. I was getting lots of twitches on the worm rod,


but the bait was getting pulled apart and I put it down to small fish and switched over to prawn on both, which seemed to last far better. During this time Mike was catching fish steadily,


with several over the 2 lb mark and he’d also lost a better one at the net. After a couple of hours of nothing I decided to try


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somewhere else, and moved to the other side of the lake where it was deeper. The swim I chose looked perfect with an overhanging tree either side of it, and a small bed of bullrushes to my right before a load more trees overhung the margins. The spot to my left looked equally good as I was


on a small point and the bank cut back here under the tree and its roots went down into the water, which was also much deeper than where I had been fishing, at around four foot or so. Both spots looked perfect for perch and I was far


happier, all I had to do now was catch one! Often it can take a little while to build the swim


up and get the perch in the area, as it had with Mike when he first moved into the swim that was now producing fish regularly for him. For the first 45 minutes or so after moving there


he hadn’t had a bite but it had been worth sitting it out and keeping the feed going in. When after a couple of hours I still hadn’t had


so much as a twitch I was starting to get a bit concerned, especially as Mike’s swim had now gone quiet as well and he hadn’t had a bite for ages either.


Although the classic time for perch is dusk this


water was starting to look like an exception, as the middle part of the day from 10am to 2pm had been best. Finally just as the light was fading I had a steady take on my left-hand rod and struck into what I


from the previous session, as perch can often be found in groups. But after a few hours nothing had happened and


I was considering moving when I had a twitchy take and struck into a fish. Again it wasn’t very big and although I didn’t weigh it would have been about a pound-and-a-half. After that my swim went dead and my dad wasn’t


faring much better, with just one small perch and a carp to show for his efforts. I moved to the far end of the lake on the other


bank for the afternoon, settling into a swim that had a nice overhanging bush in the margins and also gave access to a weeping willow on the end of an island. So I fished one rod on each spot. I was getting a few twitches and the odd line bite


on the rod fished to the island, and finally I had a positive take and line was taken from the loosely set Baitrunner. I struck into the fish and from the head shaking


could tell it was a perch, and it was putting up a good account of itself. I was a bit disappointed when it came to the surface and I could see that it would be lucky to make 2 lb, and in fact on the scales weighed 1 lb 13 oz. The fishing was very slow and I had to wait until


almost dusk for my next bite, and this did feel big and I played it very carefully. I caught a glimpse of it and it was perch coloured but didn’t look quite right, and I saw why a few minutes later when a grey-coloured F1 popped up to the surface. That was the end of the action but I will be going back for another go as the water has huge potential.


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