"As good as a rest..."

 

"A change", according to received wisdom, "is as good as a rest", and as my fishing had taken on an uncharacteristically restless mood over the last fortnight perhaps a change was required. The restlessness had been induced by what had started out as a whimsical desire to catch a 2 pound perch from the Club Lake, a desire which was beginning to become something of an obsessive compulsion. I'm no stranger to 2 pound perch, having caught a fair few fish of such stature in recent years, and have only in the last fortnight turned my attention to angling for them in the Club Lake, but for some reason the "Club Lake project" has taken hold with a vengeance that contrasts starkly with my normal laid back approach to matters piscatorial.

My first two sessions had seen me on each occasion landing a single perch of about a pound within the first hour, and thereafter being periodically bothered by carp, with perch conspicuously absent for the remainder of the session. In both cases I had stayed in one likely looking swim and float fished prawn, while attempting to build the swim by feeding red maggots. It was clearly time to try something different, and so I arrived at the lake determined to take a more mobile approach, and to replace the prawn hookbaits with small live baits. The change of tactics was completed by me forsaking the venerable old split cane rods and centre pin reels that I normally choose to employ, and opting instead to use the lovely carbon rod that my rodmaking friend Don Morse from the USA custom built for me a few years ago. At just six and a half feet long, and as light as the proverbial feather, it would be the perfect companion for a mobile session, and having in the past handled pike to just shy of 20 pounds, there was every reason to feel confident in its ability to tame a mere 2 pound perch. 

After a period in which the weather had seemed to have got itself stuck in some strange indecisive liminal space between Winter and Spring, the day was warm and (alas for perch fishing) sunny, but despite the conditions I stubbornly resolved to stick to the plan and try for perch. I had been joined by long-time fishing companion David, who had accompanied me as an observer, as he plans to join the club for next season and wanted to get a sense of the place. The livebaits had thankfully proved predictably fairly easy to catch, and before long a small liphooked rudd was swimming around enticingly beneath a particularly attractive perch bob float, complete with a Kingfisher feather decorating its bulbous body. (the float, that is, not the rudd!)

I persisted with the livebait for a couple of hours, and both rudd employed for the task did their bit by swimming around gamely, before being unhooked and released, but there was no sign of any interest from perch, nor I concluded as the sun rose higher and hotter, was there likely to be. I admitted defeat, and decided to make the best of the glorious weather and spend the remainder of the day float fishing maggots for whatever chose to happen along. It took a few attempts to master striking with a short rod at the float's dipping, but before long a succession of pretty carp were being played to the bank with pleasing regularity, the procession of commons and caramel flanked mirrors being occasionally interrupted by a roach, rudd, juvenile perch or, on one occasion, a bream. This was carefree fishing in a manner that reminded me of my early childhood forays into angling, fishing at its simplest, although as a boy I would have caught far fewer fish and today's catch would have constituted a "red letter day."

I took a break from fishing to enjoy my first cigar for over half a year, appropriately on the day that the Queen said farewell in the Chapel at Windsor to her husband of just shy of 74 years, a Punch Petit Coronation, a cigar first manufactured in Cuba to mark her coronation in 1953. As I savoured its sweet yet peppery flavour, a muffled single bell tolled solemnly from the village church, a reminder of the funeral taking place in Berkshire, and that even when enjoying an afternoon in the sun, this world, though infused with beauty, is also a vale of tears.

A few more fish were added, before I bade goodbye to the lake, strangely satisfied despite the lack of the perch I had set out in search of that morning. In a sense the failure to connect with a large perch was a relief. The weather had sent a message, that it was time to forgo the serious quest for specimen perch until the Autumn, and to enter into the spirit of Spring and Summer fishing, which for me is always a more casual and carefree enterprise. I had come, seen, and failed to conquer, but the Club Lake's perch haven't seen the last of me, and refreshed by a Summer of relaxed and lazy angling, they will be returned to with purpose and determination when the leaves turn to russet and the first frosts fall.