A spring in my step for perch

Sometimes a thing is enough of a pleasure to make it worth prolonging, and so I arrived at the not-so-difficult decision that this year I would extend my perch fishing to the end of April, and forgo my usual spring and summer fishing until the commencement of the merry month of May. In effect, this equates to furthering my serious pursuit of specimen perch by four weeks and postponing the period when my fishing becomes a far more casual affair which, in all candour, is little more than an exercise in enjoying the sunshine and surroundings while messing about catching small carp during the warmer months. This casual approach to angling holds sway until Autumn comes around and my addiction to all things perch is resumed in earnest. 

I had also recently come into ownership of some lovely handmade perch bobs, made specifically for me by a skilled craftsman, each one a lovely little object in porcupine quill and cork, with tiny little perch decals decorating the smooth cork bodies and was eager to give one of them its maiden outing.

Joining me at the perch pond was my friend John from Cambridgeshire, who is not only a highly competent angler (and onetime Chairman of The Perchfishers) but is also the only fisherman I know who rivals Bob Mortimer in his ongoing and unsuccessful battle with the effects of gravity while fishing. On the only two occasions that John has netted pike for me (once on the Fens and once on the Trent) he has ended up sliding inelegantly down the bank towards the river on his backside still gripping the landing net tightly while wearing a look of mild panic on his face! 

As ever, my approach was simplicity itself. The small perch bob was lowered next to near bank cover, and red maggots and bits of broken up prawn where constantly drip fed into the swim. Bait was the ubiquitous prawn, impaled on a barbless size 12 hook. The air temperature was mild and Spring-like, but the sky overhead was graphite grey and pregnant with threat.

After about an hour, and following a couple of missed bites, a better timed strike saw me connected to what was clearly not only an angry perch, but also a not insubstantial one, and after a couple of minutes of two and fro-ing the fish came round to my way of thinking and surrendered to the waiting landing net. The scales registered a weight of 2lb 1oz, and after the obligatory photo shoot the fish was returned to her watery home, and with a flick of the tail was gone.

I recast, resumed regular loose feeding, and returned my attention to my float. An hour passed before I was once again attached to a fish, another fine striped specimen, not as large as the first of the day, and one which, if weighed, would probably have pulled the scales down to somewhere around the pound and a half mark.

Meanwhile, on the far bank John was having less luck, with both his legered prawn and float fished lobworm being resolutely ignored by the perch. He had, however, landed a good sized ide and a procession of unwelcome crayfish.

As the clock approached midday I once again found myself tussling with a determined striped protagonist, which gave a good account of itself before reluctantly joining me on the bank, where it turned out to be my second two pounder of the day, weighing in at exactly 2 pounds. 

As morning morphed into afternoon, the still sunless and dismal sky turned its attention to making good on its earlier threat, initially persistent rain gaining in confidence as the afternoon wore on until it displayed all of the malice that sent Noah scuttling for the ark in the day's of mankind's infancy. There was to be no respite from the diluvium deluge, and any further fish would clearly be earned at the expense of a soaking. Umbrellas were raised, shoulders hunched against the elements, and John and I continued to will our floats into disappearance. 

John eventually managed to connect with the target species, with a perch of about a pound taking a fancy to his link legered prawn. I had by now changed from my perch bob and prawn approach and had fined down to a light dart style float and double red maggot on a size 18, which accounted for my final fish of the day, a little striped sergeant that looked to be somewhere around a pound and a half in size.

By mid afternoon, with the temperature having dropped dramatically, we decided that our angling virtue had been well and truly established by our persistence in persevering in the face of the unrelenting downpour, and as we packed away steam rose from our waterproofs as the rain continued to fall unabated. Things that come easily rarely convey much in the way of satisfaction, but today's brace of two pounders had been hard won in testing conditions, and so the pleasure of John's company and the gratification of knowing that piscatorial success had been achieved in conditions that were less than hospitable, combined to create a feeling of wellbeing that lasted the entirety of my homeward journey. (although, in all honesty, I suspect the car's heater was also a significant factor in adding to the sense of warm glow and contentment that accompanied me  on the drive home.) 

The plan is for one more assault on the perch before my attention turns to the more traditional species of spring and summer. Would it be greedy to wish for just one more two pounder?

A perch before lunchtime

Many of the best things to happen to me have been unscheduled, unplanned and unexpected. Sadly, the passage of time and busyness of adult life often mitigate against the spontaneous, to the detriment of wellbeing, as life becomes increasingly squeezed into Google calendars, spreadsheets and diary commitments. However, my life has not yet quite become entirely devoid of the pleasure of "last minute decisions", and as the days drew towards the weekend a previously unforeseen opportunity to spend Saturday morning fishing opened up, resulting in me on a whim contacting David and Roger and planning to spend a few hours in pursuit of perch at the club lake.

The sky was an insipid shade of grey, misty, overcast and mildly threatening as I threaded the line through the rings of the old glass fibre rod, enjoying the distinctive noise of the line being pulled from the ratchet of the centrepin, the only sound to rival that of the avian melody being struck up the birds who were busy welcoming the new day in song.

With the depth plumbed and all of the preliminaries sorted, I dropped my hook, baited with double red maggot, into the lake less than a rod length out and settled down to watch my float, while regularly introducing small handfuls of maggots into the swim. After half an hour of staring at a motionless float, the 3BB sarkandas reed waggler wobbled twice, dipped and submerged. A swift upward motion of the rod found me attached to my intended quarry and  after a short tussle a reasonable perch was being drawn over the rim of the net. A handsome fish, bristling with all the usual bravado and swagger common to its species but at around a pound in weight it was by no means a monster and so after an admiring glance and a quick photo it was time to return the fish to its watery home and recast in hopes of a larger specimen.

As the morning drew on the wind gained strength, at times whipping the lake's surface into waves which lapped against the bank and caused the float's orange tip to rhythmically rise and fall as it rode the peaks and troughs. Bites were proving hard to come by with only the occasional roach or small carp gate-crashing the party intended for perch before David found himself playing a better quality striped protagonist to the net. In terms of size his fish might very well have been the twin of my earlier capture and restored our belief that, just possibly, for one of us the hoped for two pounder might yet make an appearance.

 

Roger had been persevering with prawn as his hook bait in the hope of avoiding small fish and tempting a specimen, but while the prawns had succeeded in his avoiding the small fish they had similarly been ignored by their larger brethren, prompting Roger to change his bait to red maggot which resulted in him catching the smallest perch of the day, a wriggly little juvenile which would have been dwarfed had it been placed in a tea strainer let alone a landing net!

Eventually patience and persistence in the face of hostile weather were rewarded when David found himself tangling with what was clearly a much more substantial adversary which turned out to be a fine perch that pleasingly took the scales past the magic 2 pound mark to rest at a satisfying 2 pounds and 2 ounces.

The wind continued its onslaught on the three anglers, as we hunched our shoulders against its wrath, and bites continued to be at a premium. The last word of the day was had by another rogue carp which took a liking to the maggots presented on my final cast, putting a good bend in the vintage glass fibre avon rod I was deploying and ploughing around the swim with dogged determination before finally succumbing and stoically resigning itself to the net.

By midday we were all three of us packed up and bidding farewell to one another and to the lake until the next time. It had been a gruelling morning's fishing in grim conditions, but three decent perch felt like a good result, and the larger of David's brace a minor triumph. To date, my own record since Christmas is four sessions fished and six perch over a pound landed, two of which broke the 2 pound mark, but every one of those fish has been hard earned in the face of adversity and less than clement conditions. Fishing in the winter months brings its own challenges and has an attritional quality, but for all that I'd rather be by a lakeside, nose and eyes streaming in response to the cold than anywhere else. Cold weather angling is for me both an affliction and an addiction, but one from which I seek no refuge nor wish to be rehabilitated from. After all, there are worse things....  

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. 

Getting back on the perch

The kids these days have a word for it: "meh." One dictionary definition of this rather unattractive sounding modern word proposes that "Meh is an interjection used as an expression of indifference or boredom. It is often regarded as a verbal equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders." It's a word much less associated with relaxed nonchalance and far more suggestive of the descent into lethargy. The early days of the New Year were ones in which I was visited by an overwhelming feeling of "meh." Work was busy but after the Christmas break (and an outbreak of Covid in the family, which led to a few days of us largely living in separate parts of the same house) I was struggling to find my usual enthusiasm for anything, and with the Diocesan offices once again closed in response to the latest national outbreak of the now too familiar plague, I was beginning to feel the cumulative effects of two years of living a more solitary life than is my norm. The extrovert side of my personality was suffering as a result of the frustrations of so much of what would form my normal human contact now being mediated through the unsatisfactory medium of screen time on Zoom. Even more worrying, was that I was struggling to summon the energy to engage in the activities that I usually find life-giving and energising. Several times I contemplated fishing but each time I failed to summon the requisite enthusiasm. Eventually, as the first month of 2022 drew to a close, realising that something had to give, I roused myself from my emotional stupour and contacted Roger, who agreed with my diagnosis that the only cure for my sense of ennui was for me to get off my backside and for us to spend a few hours together chasing perch at the Club Lake.

It was the last day of January when our diaries and work and family commitments gave us the first opportunity to fish together, providing a welcome window of a few hours from lunchtime into the afternoon for angling activity. We set up in adjacent swims, both employing a simple float and red maggot approach and predictably both choosing to indulge our preference for utilising vintage tackle and were joined by our friend David who, now retired, fishes at least once a week every week, much to the envy of Roger and I. 

In the event, from a fishing perspective the afternoon proved to be a struggle. David started off on prawns, while Roger and I opted for a float fished red maggot approach. The wind swirled and howled, the air was cold and the fish uncompliant. In time, David also switched to maggots and we all picked up roach, tiny perch and the odd rogue carp, but the larger perch we sought remained elusive, until inside the last hour I connected with a fish whose fight was instantly recognisable as that of a decently sized perch. My striped adversary gave a commendable account of itself before surrendering to the net and turned out to be a venerable old warrior complete with a hole in it's spikey dorsal which registered a weight of 2 pounds and 3 ounces, the only notable fish to fall to any of us on what had been an engrossing but exacting afternoon's piscatorial activity.

Despite the challenging nature of the fishing it had been a good afternoon beside the lake with Roger and David, the enjoyment not diminished by the cold or the perch's general unwillingness to please, and yet another reminder of how fine the line sometimes is between success and failure- even on the hardest of days it only requires one fish to momentarily drop its guard to turn defeat into a future treasured memory. The triumvirate of place, people, and memory has always been an intrinsic part of how I make sense of my own story, and the Club Lake is rapidly joining other lakes from my angling history as a place in which I feel comfortably rooted and where memories are being made that will give birth to the stories of tomorrow, and the best of those stories will include within them the company of friends. My tackle packed away, I looked around the lake for one last time and recalled that the earliest Christians contended that God had given us two books of revelation: the book of Scripture, and the book of creation. They weren't wrong. There is much unnecessary beauty in the natural world, and for it I am grateful. The secret is to make time to pay attention to it, to listen to what is says and to respond with thankfulness. It doesn't take much to make me happy- sometimes it's as simple as just one fish.

New Year's Eve perching.

Often it's the poets who say it best. Here's what I mean:

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron feeds.

I come into the presence of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I come into the presence of still water

and I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world

and am free.

All that I was feeling as I trudged through the wet grass and cloying mud to the Club Lake for my final session of 2021 on the year's final day, put eloquently into words by the American poet Wendell Berry, someone who has never met me, much less knows of me. Such is the power of the poet's pen.

It had been a pleasant family Christmas, restful and happy, but I was still feeling the weight of the year that had preceded it, the Lockdowns and restrictions, the isolation and shrunk-small world that working from home brings, the various waves of Covid, pressures at work and so much more sitting on my shoulders, but in the five minutes that it takes to tramp from the car park to the lake I felt the weight begin to lift. As I tackled up, I admired the winter trees that fringe the lake, the gnarled and twisted fingers of their denuded branches clawing at the unseasonably mild air as they dream of once more being adorned with the pastel colours of their springtime livery.

The target fish were perch, the bait red maggots, and the realistic ambition a nice mixed bag of fish, with the chance but no guarantee of a good sized perch amongst the mix.

I had elected an old ET Barlow's Vortex glass fibre Avon as my weapon of choice, paired with an even more ancient Allcocks Aerial centre pin and chose a swim with some sparse wintry bushes overhanging the water at the margin's edge. Three red maggots underneath a Norfolk reed waggler and impaled on a size 16 hook were lowered next to the bushes' branches, loose maggots were fed and the waiting game began. In truth, the wait was neither long nor onerous and after a few minutes and a couple of missed bites a tiny perch was being swung unceremoniously to hand, the first of a procession of small perch, roach and rudd that obliged me as the swim began to build.

Unusually for me, I was fishing alone, the session being an impromptu post-breakfast decision, but having failed to persuade any friends to accompany me, I managed to bribe a robin to keep me company at the cost of a few red maggots every so often, the chubby red breasted compatriot perching sentinel-like on the branches behind me for the entire duration of my stay. Once more the float quivered and submerged and this time the resistance was more sustained, and after a spirited tussle a decent perch was being drawn over the net. The fish wasn't of sufficient size to justify subjecting it to the indignity of the scales and weigh sling, but looked to be about a pound and a half, a pleasing perch in any angler's estimation.

A few more small perch, roach and rudd followed, along with four carp, each of which ploughed up and down the swim before being landed, and all of which were probably a couple of pounds or so in weight, before I once again found myself connected to a reasonable perch, which proved to be a little smaller than the first fish, but certainly a fish in excess of a pound and possessed of all the bravura swagger and bristling bully boy tendencies associated with this most beautiful of freshwater fish species.

This was to be the last fish of note, and after a couple more perch of insubstantial size I packed up in an unhurried manner, the two hours spent by still waters having had the necessary calming effect, drawing me into the grace of the world and its Creator, and rendering my spirit free.

Whatever unknowns 2022 may throw at me (and for sure there will be some), of this I remain convinced: angling in pleasing environs will be, as it has been to me for over four decades, a balm to heal the soul. I really must go more often next year.

Angling Anemoia

 

I suffer from anemoia. This confession need spread no alarm- the condition is neither contagious nor life threatening. In fact, you've probably never heard of it. "Anemoia" is one of those words that exists and has an established meaning, but is rarely to be found in common vernacular usage. The Dictionary defines it as "nostalgia for a time you've never known", which pretty much describes my approach to angling. I was converted to the gentle art in 1981, and so my formative angling years were in the twighlight of the glass fibre era and the early days of carbon as the mass produced norm for fishing rods. Very occasionally one would see an old chap sat atop a willow basket wielding a cane rod, but such sightings were rare.

These days, I choose to fish almost exclusively with rods of cane or older examples of glass fibre, most of which predate my earliest forays into the world of fishing. The reason is, in part, aesthetic. There is something intrinsically alluring about a craftsman-built cane rod, whether restored to a lustrous varnish finish or bearing the noble scars and patina of over half a century's use, something attractive about handmade floats crafted from quill or reed, and something reassuring about the solidity of an ancient fixed spool reel or the machined perfection of a venerable old centre pin.

Occasionally I question why I have elected to pursue this particular fork in the angling road, but the conclusion I always return to is that the answer to the question goes beyond (although includes) the aesthetic considerations, and is largely accounted for by anemoia. Put simply, I long for a simpler time. I am not blind to the fact that the "simpler time" I yearn for was a time when healthcare was less developed, life expectancy shorter, life for minority groups harder, and we were still slowly uncoupling ourselves from a morally dubious exploitative Empire, but notwithstanding all of that, there's a simplicity in the England of Mr Crabtree and Peter which enchants and calls to me with siren voice. An England less detached from its rural roots than its 21st Century counterpart, an England in which children still roamed wild (but not feral), climbing trees, collecting newts from ponds, chasing hoops down hills, playing football in the street, and not imprisoned in their bedrooms oppressed by screens, phones, social media and existential doubts about their self -worth.

Sir Isaac Newton wrote that "Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things", and he was a man who knew a thing or two about things. Born in the late 1960's, I am aware that I'm (to quote Marc Bolan) a "20th Century boy" in a 21st Century world, and my heart at times yearns curiously for the years before I was, but when wielding a cane rod and centre pin reel both of which are older than I am, I find myself in some small way transported back in time to a time before me, a time when I suspect time itself seemed to move more slowly, as indeed it does while fishing.

I may be a deluded romantic and my anemoia an affliction, it may even be that I'm guilty of remembering the past as it never really was, but the best of it is that, as far as I can tell, the only cure for said affliction is to go fishing, and such a prescription can only be a good thing.

When perch aren't the main thing

I hesitate to deal in cliche, but in this instance I have little choice. We've all heard (and oftentimes trotted out) the tired sayings and aphorisms that declare "fishing to be about more than catching fish" but a thing doesn't cease to be true simply because it's become a truism, and today  the veracity of the statement was incontrovertible. Ostensibly we were fishing for perch and to win our club's annual Perch Trophy, but in reality we were fishing in memory of a friend and to raise money for charity.

We're an unusual bunch, a collection of just shy of 100 anglers with not only a commonly  held passion for angling, but also in the case of  most of our members a strong commitment to the Christian faith. (the clue is in the group's name: Christian Anglers). With a membership that traverses the whole of the UK, much of our contact is via a Facebook group, but we also hold fish-ins and an annual weekend camping retreat, and since our friend John Rellie (pictured below) died in 2018 we have held an annual perch match at the conclusion of which the captor of the biggest perch wins the shield for a year and has his name engraved on the trophy.

The match is far more an exercise in socialising, remembering  John's life with thanks, and raising money than it is a serious pursuit of perch, but our membership contains among its number some seriously proficient anglers (including no less than one of the vice-presidents of The Perchfishers)  and prior to today the match had never been won by a fish of less than 2lb 7 oz despite the rather casual nature of the event. 

As might reasonably be expected from a day in early November, there was a slight chill in the air when the 9 anglers who had booked to fish the event gathered in the car park to draw for choice of swims. Each angler, on their name being drawn from a hat, had the right to go and plant a bankstick in the swim of their choice, and once all of the swims were allocated, the fun could begin in earnest (or something approaching earnestness, while never quite possessing the requisite seriousness to accurately fit the designation!). Draw completed and Pete cooked up some bacon and sausage sandwiches and after an al fresco breakfast the suitably fortified anglers set to work in pursuit of stripe-sided monsters.

As it transpired, the weather was kinder to us than the fish proved to be. The day was overcast yet mild, but the fish in general, and the perch in particular, proved to be in a less generous mood. The occasional small fish was swung in by those electing to fish with maggots, but for those of us who persisted with bigger baits the fishing was an  arduous and attritional affair. 

Roy managed a hat-trick of small barbel, which tested the elastic in his pole and Pete landed a broad backed common that fought hard on his light float set up. Dave and Garry also both lost decent carp at the net, but  rods pleasingly bent in their battle curve were few and far between.

My small perch bob, which had been made for me by Roy, had done no meaningful bobbing for nearly three biteless hours, but eventually it trembled, moved jerkily across the water's surface and then submerged with purpose. The strike met with firm resistance  and after a tussle of two or three minutes a handsome perch was engulfed in the folds of the net. The scales registered a weight of 1 lb 10 ounces, and it turned out to be the only perch of noteworthy size to be caught on the day, which resulted in me retaining the trophy I had first won the previous year.

At the prearranged hour of three o'clock the match was declared completed, and I made a reasonable job of feigning humility on being presented with the trophy. The fishing had been hard, and for only one decent perch to have been landed over a six hour period by nine anglers with more aggregated years of fishing experience than we'd care to admit to was disappointing, but the main aims of the day had been more than accomplished. We had celebrated John's life, enjoyed each other's company, and raised over £200 for a charity that looks to demonstrate God's love to people who are often overlooked, looked down on or judged, yet who are created in His image and, like all of us, are deserving of a new start and another chance in life. As I drove out of the car park I almost thought I could hear John's raucous laugh- after all, on his last visit to the lake he caught a perch of a pound and a half and he wasn't even fishing for perch. "What's wrong with you guys? I can catch them on luncheon meat and you can't catch them on worms and prawns" he'd have boomed in his voluble South African accent. Gone but not forgotten, and today remembered in a way that he'd have thoroughly approved of. 

We'll do it all over again next year, and hopefully 2022's perch will have read the memo.