One last try for tench and another pop at perch

Ok, so I lied. At the end of August I'd determined that my spring and summer spent in pursuit of tench and crucians was over. It was, I declared in a post on this blog,  time to reset my sights, recalibrate my ambitions, and to target perch. However, after one (unsuccesful) perch session at the start of September and with the weather still unseasonally mild, I couldn't escape the pull of the syndicate lake. After a summer in which I'd acheived new personal bests for both tench and crucians some might call it greed to go back for more, but to me it felt much less like avarice and more like an itch that needed to be scratched for one last time. In the event it proved to be a non-event in fish catching terms, with my bobbins remaining motionless, my bite alarm silent, and no tench added to the year's tally. However, it had been a pleasing few hours and the sight of the odd small fish occasionally jumping as if being harried by predators made my mind up that I would, at some point in the winter, be back to begin exploring whether the pond might have serious perch potential. But for now, it was time to pack away the tench gear, and fix my attention firmly on all things perch related. 

If truth be told, my perch fishing prospects were causing me some anxiety. Now, I'm fully aware that there are people in some parts of the world who struggle to subsist and stay alive in the face of mind boggling poverty, while others live in war-torn places or under oppressive and autocratic dictatorships, so I don't want to overstate the significance of my perch-related angst but the search for a new local water capable of providing decent perch was exercising my mind more than any non-angler would find comprehensible. With my previous perch haunt seeming to have passed its sell-by date in terms of regularly producing 2 pound perch, I was aware that it may take a year or two of research and false dawns before I'll be able to replicate the results that I was fortunate enough to have experienced over several years at "the perch pond", and while I tried to convince myself that the exploration was part of the adventure I was struggling to fully believe my own rhetoric. 

A week after the unsuccesful tench session and I was back at the water's edge, with my son James joining me for the commencement of the search for perch. We opted to begin our hunt for a new perch venue on a lake on which we'd never previously targetted perch, but nevertheless had  provided past encouragement in the form of several perch of around the pound mark taken by me and one more substantial beast that must have been closer to 2 pounds caught by James. All of these captures had been "happy accidents" while fishing for roach and rudd, but were enough to suggest that the water might have potential and may even prove to be home to monsters. 

Whether or not the lake is a home to monsters or not remains to be seen. Our first foray dedicated to the species produced only miniature examples of the intended quarry on a day when the rain was constant and the bites infrequent. We fished for about three and a half hours and caught mostly perch with the occasional roach and rudd. Neither of the other anglers on the lake had managed to conjure a single fish from the lake in the time we were there, all of our fish falling prey to red maggot. I spent the first two hours staring at a float that only twice registered the most hesitant of bites with worm as bait, before deciding to emulate James who had been catching at intervals on maggot. The switch proved succesful (using the term very loosely!) for me, and I too began catching tiny perch along with a solitary gudgeon, a species of fish which never fails to transport me back to my boyhood and put a smile on my face.

With the rain showing no desire to abate, we packed up having learned little to inform our longer term quest for perch but having enjoyed a morning of good conversation and good coffee and although we were both soaking wet our enthusiasm for our next session remained undampened. Somewhere out there must be a body of water full of the stamp of perch that once resided in our previous pond of choice- we just need to find it.