Plan B for perch

The ominously dark sky was moody, malevolent and full of watery threat and menace as the clouds scudded across the firmament at breakneck speed. A bitingly cold wind swept and swirled, venting its anger at the lakeside trees distorting their shape and forcing them to bend and bow to its power. Pete and I hunched our shoulders against the elements and began tackling up, fortified only by the possibility of specimen perch at our favourite perch pond.

Until 48 hours earlier the plan had been that we would be pursuing pike on the Fifteen Foot Drain in Cambridgeshire, but our Fenland friends Ray and John with whom we had been due to fish counselled against the trip, their considered local opinion being that fishing would be close to impossible, unpleasant in the extreme and downright dangerous with a severe storm warning for the area having been issued by the Met Office. If things looked rough on our normally serene Leicestershire perch pond, one can only imagine how things would have appeared on the permanently bleak and wind-swept tree-barren Fenland flatlands. 

An hour into the session and the weather began to brighten. The sky transformed itself from grey to blue, the sun dislodged the clouds and the wind dropped. The prospects similarly began to take a turn for the better as we each caught a small roach and perch before Pete's float-fished prawn was engulfed by a fish that was clearly of significantly bigger proportions. The short fight resulted in a fine perch that weighed in at exactly 2 pounds nestling in the net.

Half an hour later it was my turn to find myself attached to an angry perch, which turned out to be the twin of Pete's fish, also registering a weight of exactly 2 pounds.

Despite having a brace of specimen perch to our credit, the fishing was proving a challenge and every bite was the result of hard work. Switching occasionally to red maggots resulted in the odd much smaller fish, but even they were hard to come by. However, we were both enjoying ourselves accepting gratefully the opportunity to lay aside the pressures of work and to receive the peace of the lakeside as a gift. 

Two further perch made the trip to the bankside, and on a day of pleasing symmetry, there was one for each of us and both were of similar size, Pete's weighing 1lb 12oz and mine looking to be about a pound and a half.

After four and a half hours of staring intently at our floats, and with the sky once again beginning to recast itself in more threatening tone we packed our tackle away, delighted  with our hard won success and pleased to have cheated the worst of the predicted storm.

Minutes after pulling out of the car park, and safely ensconced in the warmth of the car, the rain began to fall. I allowed myself a smile - Plan B it may have been, but the alternative plan had come together nicely and sometimes you can't say fairer than that.