Bob, bob, bobbing along ...

My favourite fish are perch.

My favourite style of fishing is float fishing.

My favourite float for fishing for perch is a brightly coloured perch bob.

To me the perch is a totemic fish, and the perch bob an iconic float. It's a float which, when tucked in close to an overhanging tree or tight to reeds or vertical structure (such as the "camp sheathing" beloved of Mr Crabtree) screams imminent promise, but even as the angler's intense concentration is focused on a future disappearance, the presence in the water of a perch bob also spirits the fisherman back in time to his boyhood and to the age of his angling innocence. Every schoolboy had a few perch bobs in his tackle box, as do today those adult anglers for whom the romance of the perch has not diminished or been replaced by the hunt for gargantuan, fat bellied, boilie-guzzling beasts of the deep.

I have more perch bobs than I could reasonably justify the need for, but less than I would like. All of mine are handmade, crafted for me either by professional floatmakers Ian Lewis or Paul Duffield, or by my good friend Roy, a true gentleman and former Yorkshire miner with whom I've shared many a pleasant bankside moment.

I have a range that encompasses large (and rarely used) ones that take a couple of swan shot, all the way down to the small ones I most frequently deploy which take just one or two BB. All are made from natural materials, balsa, cork and even oak galls, some are painted to replicate the Harcork classics of yore, others feature spiral whipping, and each is a thing of beauty in its own right.

If using maggots (red, of course) to pursue my beloved stripy quarry I favour the use of a simple waggler of either Norfolk or Sarkandas reed, as the increased buoyancy of the perch bob runs the risk of decreasing sensitivity and alerting the perch to my deceptive intent, but whenever a lobworm or prawn (and very occasionally a minnow) is employed, it will be to the perch bob that I turn as a matter of course.

Recently, I put a few of my perch bob collection in a dedicated float box (handy to chuck in a satchel for impromptu last minute trips), and even, rather indulgently,  took delivery from the United States of a brightly coloured decal featuring a shoal of perch to decorate the box's lid.

It may be a while before we fish again in this year disrupted by pandemic, but I hope that by the time we reach Keats's "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" a time when the angler's mind naturally turns to thoughts of perch, that I will be found, crouched by a pond, cane rod in hand, finger on the spool of the centre pin, poised to strike at the disappearance  of a brightly tipped, bulbous bodied perch bob. In its simplicity and serenity, my happiness, consists of such moments.