Year's end perching

It's a strange thing, middle age. I'm acutely aware that I have fewer years to fish than when I began my love affair with this most enthralling of pastimes as a child, and that there will most likely come a time in the future when I'm no longer able to fish. There may even come a time when I no longer remember that I once loved to fish. All of which embues every session with significance, and creates in me a sense that it is something akin to a duty to enjoy every moment that I spend on the bank. Even those in the depths of winter when the fishing is hard and the weather hostile, and the fireside provides seductive temptation. Perhaps, especially those. 

This morning was one such morning and the air was chill when my friend Roger drew up outside the house to drive us to the lake which would become the focus of our attention and aspirations for the next few hours. The target species, inevitably, was our winter go-to of perch. There was a time when my winters were dominated by pike, but now it's thoughts of the stripes, spines, bright red fins and cavernous mouths of specimen perch that draw me away from the warmth and comfort of the house. 

This year has seen my least succesful pursuit of perch since I started fishing seriously for them six or seven years ago. In that time I've landed a pleasing number of two pound plus fish, but my three sessions prior to this morning had resulted in just small perch, the very largest of which would probably only have weighed somewhere around the three quarters of a pound mark. I was in serious need of perchy redemption and fully cognisant of the fact that this would be my last shot at it before the year's end and with Storm Darragh due to make its presence known in Leicestershire by mid afternoon, we only had a few hours in which to attempt to entice our striped-sided quarry.

Unfortunately, in keeping with recent form, the perch failed to make an appearance, with the exception of two minute perch that would be designated as "wasps" in the vernacular of the modern dropshotting fraternity, both of which fell to Roger's rod. Bites of any kind were rare, and swapping between lobworms and maggots only produced four small roach for me. By the time we packed up the early afternoon sun was shining weakly in the wolf's coat grey sky, and Roger had also managed just four fish, although the highlight of the session came in the form of a decent sized ide that took a fancy to Roger's float-fished double red maggot and which put up a respectable fight before succombing to the welcoming folds of the landing net.

It had been a frustrating session in what has proved to be a frustrating end to my fishing year, but despite the exasperation of disappointing results (or, more precisely,  a disappointing lack of results!) the failure has been more than ameliorated by the sheer pleasure of the act of angling itself. A day spent in the quiet of the countryside in the presence of a friend, attempting to solve the puzzle whose resolution is a fish on the bank is its own reward even on those occasions when the puzzle "wins." 

Here's to an upturn in fortunes in 2025!