More Perch on the Lures

The tell-tale sergeant stripes!

From my recent blog, I'm sure many of you have gathered that I have slightly got the lure bug! Having picked up a few new lures and jigheads on the internet, I was dying to give them a try in some of the nice swims I had found. I decided on the first trip to go and try a couple of spots that in the past I have sighted some absolute monster perch. On the first stretch, I had a good follow from a good-sized perch, but unfortunately this was the only action that was to be had on the particular section. Having brought worms with me too, I decided on one of the more familiar stretches to try and twitch one in the path of a perch. I imagined with the conditions in front of me this was certainly going to be pretty deadly. Having arrived at a particular swim, I spotted three perch. I attached a split shot on the hooklink, and casted just above them and twitched the worm into their sight. The biggest one which looked a good pound or so started to move for it, but in a millisecond I saw one of the smaller perch push ahead and grab it themselves. It was nice to have managed another pretty perch in these difficult conditions and decided it was time to go home as I had a job induction the following day.

This one took a liking to a juicy worm!

The following session was a morning session, the day after my induction, and I felt confident having had a few natural-coloured lures arrive, that it was definitely worth another shot on the lures. The beginning of the session proved challenging, but eventually a single perch gave itself away, was there any of those better fish lurking which I had been sighting on sessions prior? On one particular cast I went a bit tighter to the streamer weed and let the lure sink down a bit more. I slowly retrieved the it, covering the past kill zones and out of nowhere a good perch appeared and absolutely devoured my natural-coloured lure. After an initial crazy burst of energy and plenty of sprints, a good perch graced the surface. I nervously reached for my net and managed to safely net it. Although it didn't look much longer than the 1lb 7oz perch I had prior, it's build was on a slightly better level and I knew it was at least creeping towards 2lbs. After quickly putting it on the scales, my face lit up when I saw the dial hovering between 2lbs and 2lb 1oz. It was great to have had a perch of this stamp as it has been years since I've had anything from this waterway of that similar stamp.

A stunning 2 pounder!

I continued the day, managing another smaller perch and disappointingly losing a good pike, which absolutely tore line off my little reel and had my light lure rod buckled over. The day was an overall success though, as I had achieved my little target of a fish around the 2lb stamp. It was certainly encouraging though, as this fish was certainly not the biggest I had seen on my trips so far, so will be nice to get out and target a few more fish of this stamp sometime soon!

Tight Lines,

Tom Aldous