PB Perch

With the chance of some perch, I managed to persuade my lad out for a session. He's not yet got the fishing bug so I don't push him, I just occasionally ask him and if he doesn't fancy it I leave it at that. But he's been wanting to catch a perch, can you believe he's never caught one? A fish many of you lot would have learnt your trade on. How times have changed. So after I had a decent session the other day, he figured the odds of catching one might be in his favour and I might just be able to keep his attention for a little while, at least long enough to have some fun.

I talked him through the basics, explained how my little Greys rod would help him catch a fish and what to feel for and which areas he might catch a fish. I left him to do it and told him to just cast where he wanted and see if he could find some fish. I expected a perch to be somewhere here, at least a small one anyway. The Kopyto kept bouncing along the bottom and he was getting a bit excited striking at nearly every knock, but I explained he's better getting used to hitting everything than ignoring the knocks as that just breeds the wrong mentality and then when a fish comes you miss it. We'd been there ten minutes or so and he was finally in to the swing of it and then he finally got a proper knock. The rod tip was banging away and he had his first perch on. He was chuffed to bits with it!

I didn't really think many perch were in this bit of water so I made the call to move. Perch are the type of fish to at least show themselves with follows and often they chase the lure at least but we hadn't seen anything except that one perch. I knew that to keep him interested he needed to keep catching. This new spot had him straight in to the action and a slightly better stamp of perch was banked and he quickly followed that up with half a dozen more fish. He was well happy with that and so he even gave the rod to me for a go. We took it in turns to catch a perch and then pass the rod and the fish kept coming. We'd had plenty of perch now and he took a time out, leaving me to fish and since the small perch were all we had been catching I took to searching the area. I stuck on my rather old, but weighty spinner so that I could launch a huge cast and see If I could locate anything larger. I plucked out a few perch pushing the ten ounce size and then finally I got a better knock and was in to a perch of a pound or more. I was glad I'd caught something a bit bigger so that he could get a good look at a perch of size rather than just the tiddlers. He was still happy for me to fish as he was now messing with the camera taking photos of random stuff, so I kept searching for the big fish.

The sun was starting to go down a little and the light was starting to fade and I explained that this is often the time that bigger perch will feed. That they move in to areas where the smaller fish are in search of easy pickings and that one pound fish might just be the start of a few bigger fish coming in. I had a tiny tap on the rod followed by a whack and I was in. I knew it was another decent perch and when he saw it come up he thought it was massive. I didn't weight it but it was probably a pound and a half so a long way off a record but he was as impressed with a big perch as we all are. He took a few photos and then we slipped it back. I reckon Woody will love this photo.

"There's a new pb out there for you mate" I explained. If those big fish are in the area he had a right good chance of a getting one and so I gave him the rod and the spinner. He cast out and I told him to let the spinner sink a little and then retrieve. Immediately he struck in to something but it turned out to be the bottom. Luckily a few flicks of the rod tip and it was out and I told him to carry on winding in and within seconds the rod tip shot round and he was battling something which we already knew was better than any of the others he'd caught. No monster, but it's a decent perch and a new pb for him, not quite a pound but a proper perch and he was over the moon.