Spinning for stripeys

Perch are my favourite fish, more for their beauty, spiney swagger and attitude than for their size or fighting prowess. My first ever fish was a perch, and whether floatfishing or spinning they never fail to delight. I stole a morning session on a local stretch of canal this morning, choosing to take a break from the crucians to enjoy a leisurely stroll with a lure rod in the sort of balmy sunshine that has been a rarity this year.

 

Second cast of the day, using a very small red-spotted silver spinner, I caught this game little, fellow, all bristling, spikey indignation.
The sun beat down and I decided to walk on beyond the area of the canal that I'm familiar with and explore what lay beyond my normal beat. I allowed myself to be guided by the maxim WWCD (what would Crabtree do), and to fish only the perchiest looking spots.
Two more perch followed, both caught fishing around bridges, classic perch territory, and certainly swims that Mr Crabtree would have had a cast or two in. The second perch came to a red and yellow Panther Martin spinner, the final fish (on the final cast- how's that for "living the cliche!") falling for my all-time favourite perch lure, a Rublex Ondex.
It may have been more of a stroll in the sun than a serious fishing session, but when the mood takes there's little better than walking out with a rod, reel, net and small bag of lures.

Angling's common language

It's been three weeks since I last fished, although I'll be remedying that sorry statistic tomorrow. The combination of a week on our church's youth camp followed by a two week family holiday in France ruled out any piscatorial possibilities, but while in the lovely Gers region of France I purchased a copy of the second best fishing magazine I've ever read. Now, I'll be honest with you, excepting the always excellent Waterlog, I'm pretty bored with English fishing magazines. I still buy them, but much in the same way as I used to buy cigarettes when I was a smoker - not because I enjoyed most of them, but because I was addicted! They just tend to be the same old articles and thinly disguised product promotions from sponsored anglers coming round again and again like some printed version of "Groundhog Day".
 I stumbled on Le Pecheur de France in a small newsagents in a little bastide town and read it avidly for the rest of the holiday. My basic French, a bit of guesswork and the context of the articles meant that I could read and get the sense of most of what was being said, and it presented a winsome portrait of fishing accross the channel. There was lots about lure fishing, including a fascinating article about using surface baits for perch, some lovely photo's, quite a bit from a match angler called Jean Jaques Chaumet who sports the most prodigious of handlebar moustaches, and even an article on roach fishing "English-style"" (ie with a waggler and running line and reel) entitled "gardon au ble a l'angaise".
Not only did the magazine give an insight into fishing in France, but it served as a reminder that wherever anglers hail from, and however they choose to fish the fundamental attractions of the hobby are commonly owned ... a love of beautiful places and the challenge of fooling a living creature in its natural environment, before lovingly returning it from whence it came.

My "must have" lure

Ever since I first flung a plug (more in hope than anger) on a January day in 1982, I've been a devotee of lure fishing. I love the mobility, the collectability of the lures, the feel of actively hunting the prey, and the toothy critters themselves, and if I had to choose just one plug to use for the rest of my fishing days it would be ......... (wait for it) ... the Shakespear Big S. Now, I know that these days everybody is chucking Bulldawgs, Alien Eels, Replicants and 101 other soft plastic or rubber shad variants, but for over 30 years I've always had a space in my lure box for the Big S. I understand that it's no longer in production, which is a shame, but thankfully I've got half a dozen old stagers that should last a while yet. I have no doubt that a lot of the modern lures are superior, and I own and use  many of them, but there's something about that provocative wiggle just under the surface that gives me immense confidence in the Big S - that, and the fact that over the years I've caught scores of pike on them. It's only a couple of months till I get my lure rod out again for my autumn piking campaign, and, sooner or later, that means that one of my Big S's will come out of the box, be fixed to a trace and propelled into the canal. Other plugs may come and go, but for me the Big S is the "must have" plug, and I'd be far less confident setting out on a days piking without one in the lure box- it's a classic of the plug maker's art.