Now Is The Time For Big Perch

Geplaatst Wit Vis Tactiek at Dec 31, 2010

Arctic-like weather fails to discourage predator ace Mick Brown. Once these conditions arrive it is time to set your stall out for big perch...

You can catch river perch at any time during the season, but as the bait-fish shoal up when winter comes, the specimens start to strike.

I look forward to the first decent rainfall in late autumn. It adds a little colour to the river, making presentation less critical. The extra pace seems to bring the river alive and further aids presentation, by allowing baits to be trotted in the flow.

Any time from early December through to the end of the river season, you are likely to find me travelling light along the banks of the tributaries of my local fenland rivers in search of perch. My realistic target is a two-pounder. In this day and age, when the weeklies seem to be regularly full of specimen perch, it’s important to realise that a 2lb fish is still a good size target fish, and very few venues, or anglers, are regularly turning up bigger specimens. Quite often, we are simply reading about the same fish being caught over and over again, from venues like the upper Great Ouse. So, for me, a two-pounder makes my day, and a three-pounder in the net is still, as far as I’m concerned, a red-letter day. A 3lb perch really is a fantastic fish to catch.

Varied Approaches
There are many ways of tackling these venues, and I am usually armed with a few options. Certainly, small lures are very viable, and in milder conditions all I will take is a light lure outfit and half a dozen trusted lures. These include a size 6 Mepps spinner, a fat-bodied plug like a Rapala Fat Rap or the good old Shakespeare Midi ‘S’, a ½oz spinner bait like the Fox Hornet and a 4ins jig with an 18g jig head.

If I know where there are plenty of perch holed up and it’s not too cold, I’ll just take a match rod, made up with a suitable stick float, and lay on overdepth with a lob worm, baiting the swim with a groundbait/liquid worm/chopped worm mix, and sit it out for the day. When it gets bitterly cold, though, as it did when I set out to catch a perch for the cameras, and I’m pretty convinced that the other tactics aren’t going to work, I will switch to the best perch bait of all – a small livebait! I could, of course, use such a tactic at any time, but it’s a lot more trouble to go to, as first of all you have to catch some livebait. This means additional tackle and bait, making the tackle more bulky, but I accept there are times when this is the only way to go.

Find the features
For this feature session, it couldn’t really have been any colder with an overnight fall of snow, which quickly froze and set solid, making walking the riverbank very treacherous. To catch a 2lb perch for the camera was now not just a target, but more of a challenge, which I knew was achievable if I could locate a swim, which held some perch. 

The sort of swims I was looking for could easily be described by their features. Alongside moored boats, under bridges, deeper holes in the river and anywhere with features such as pump outlets, vertical banking and fallen trees. These were the sort of places I was looking for, but they must hold one more vital ingredient – shoals of smaller prey fish. Always remember, a swim that looks good isn’t necessarily going to be good, it has to have ALL the right ingredients, the most vital of all being an ample food supply. If I can catch livebaits from the swim with relative ease, then I can usually be fairly confident that there will be some decent perch among them. So, my first objective of the day was to catch a few small livebaits, and by small I was thinking of fish from three to four inches. Any silver fish is ideal, but I’m just as happy to use small perch, ruffe or gudgeon if that’s all that’s available. Years of fishing smaller rivers has taught me a vital lesson; the perch and the prey will not be evenly spread over the river, but tightly shoaled in often quite small areas. The colder it becomes, it seems, the tighter these areas also become.

Short Stops
Winter days can be very short and a process of trial and error in finding decent swims needs to be carried out quickly and efficiently. Knowing that many swims can be totally barren, I will rarely spend more than half an hour checking them out.

It’s easy to get carried away into thinking that lack of bites means there’s a need to refine the tackle, but I believe that much of the time, the lack of bites means that there are no fish in the area. If I can’t get a bite on a size 18 hook to a 1.1lb bottom, with a single maggot on the hook, then I’m even more convinced that this isn’t a swim worth spending much time on. With this in mind, I travelled light with just my livebait bucket to sit on, a small haversack to carry a few bits and pieces, and my food and drink for the session. 

Telltale Signs
It would have been easy to give up on this session, as after two moves I hadn’t had a single bite when running a 4AAA stick float down the swim, just tripping bottom with a single maggot. After my second move, though, in the far distance I noticed a couple of small fry flip out of the water next to a moored boat, and as I made my way towards it, I noticed another small fish jump out, which made me quicken my pace. As I found a gap between a couple of near-bank moored boats, I noticed a definite giveaway close to the hull of a boat moored on the far bank, which told me that perch were active. Bubbles! Perch often chase small fish to the surface, and as they strike, make a distinctive swirl with a few bubbles in it. I definitely saw a perch make an attack, and noted another small fish flap near the hull of the boat. This was a swim I definitely needed to explore to try and winkle a perch out. 

I shallowed up and cast across into the shadow of the far-bank boat. It zoomed away almost instantly, and I got my first livebait, a 4ins bleak – the perfect perch bait.

Adapted Tackle
My perch rod was actually my barbel gear – a 1.75lb test curve rod and a 4000 size reel loaded with 10lb mono. It’s slightly over gunned, but the chances of a pike taking it were very likely and the tackle needed to be up to landing it, should this happen.

My float was a 16g Sensas slider, but in the shallow water I was fishing – no more than seven feet deep – I liked the simplicity of using it as a fixed float, locked by a top rubber. I find this easier to adjust in cold weather than a sliding knot. At the business end, I have a 10in wire trace made from 20lb seven-strand wire, unfortunately needed where pike are likely, especially on Fenland Rivers. I’d certainly catch a lot more perch without the wire trace. A couple of SSG shots are pinched onto the trace, to cock the float and get the bait down. The hook is a size 4 wide-gape carp pattern. I use a barbed version for winter fishing. When the perch are bolting the baits down, I will use a barbless hook. 

The livebait is lightly hooked through the top lip, and when using a barbed hook, I slip a small piece of elastic band over the point and barb, to reduce the chances of the bait coming adrift on the cast. For barbless hooks, I use a slightly longer piece of elastic band stretched between the shank and the point to achieve the same effect.

Bites In Slow Motion
Catching a big perch will never be about the fight. They are not great fighters. For me, it’s more about the excitement of the bite and the anticipation, as the fish shows itself at the landing net. If it feels heavy, you suspect a pike, but the thought of a big perch is always in the back of your mind. When it is, panic often sets in, as they always appear bigger than they are in the water!

I soon had half a dozen small baits in my bucket, and I was ready to send one down through the swim. On the first run down I fished just off bottom. This resulted in a typical perch bite, as the float just slipped away in slow motion. A quick strike and I missed it! It was another half a dozen runs through before I had another take. This time I latched into it, and even though it weighed less than 1lb, I was happy to have got some sort of a result, as the water really was icy cold and the skies were blackening, as another bout of bad weather approached from the north.

Encouraged To Feed
Two more missed runs told me that the perch weren’t all that enthusiastic. I decided to give them a bit of encouragement in the form of a cloud groundbait, to get the prey fish excited and darting and flashing about. I quickly mixed a couple of handfuls of brown crumb and a good squirt of liquidised worm, a proven perch attractor. I like to make the feed as sloppy as possible, but to get it to the far bank I had to make it a little firmer. Half a dozen small balls were introduced to the swim, making them hit the water with a splash to break them up and small fish were obviously excited by its introduction, as a few started breaking the surface to nip at the floating crumbs.

That’s No ‘Jack’!
Two more runs through the swim failed to produce, so I changed to a tactic, which works not just for perch, but pike and zander too in very cold weather. Knowing the bottom was fairly clean, I set the float about a foot over the depth. This held up the bait, so it was slowly dragged along the bottom.

On the first run, the float slid away in a very decisive manner, and as I struck, the bend in the rod convinced me that a jack pike had taken the bait. However, as I drew the fish closer to my big net I caught the first sign of a big perch. What a cracker! Its colourful flanks glinting in the weak winter sunshine, as it entered the net. It weighed a little short of 3lb, but it made my day and justified being out in the coldest of conditions. Mission accomplished!

By following my simple approach, anyone can catch perch like this. In many parts of the country such fish tend to be neglected. Pick the right river conditions, find the prey fish and tackle up correctly and there’s every chance you will catch a few. It’s not rocket science and it’s great fun!