Martin Bowler’s Adventures Daytime joy with autumn perch
Right now you can catch these predators from dawn to dusk
SLOES on blackthorn bushes and fungi on the woodland floor are just two signs that autumn is here.
And if one fish species could also signify the season, it would have to be the perch.
Shaking off their summer lethargy, these tiger-striped bad boys are seriously on the hunt, terrorising fry that until now have led a peaceful existence.
For anglers like me, the only chance of doing battle with summer perch comes with a small window of opportunity at daybreak, while once winter arrives things reverse and dusk becomes prime time. In autumn, however, a bite can come at any time so I can fish for
perch all day.
With this in mind I was keen to give it a go on the river.
I resisted the lure of a lie-in and rose early. Fog lying knee-high over the damp grass made for an eerie, if spectacular, sight, while dew meant that every tyre track and footprint left its mark.
So, too, did the cobwebs over the grass, evidence of spider activity overnight.
FISH WITH CONFIDENCE
This bountiful time of year meant that I could make the first cast with confidence and continue in that vein until lunchtime. This was good news – the tricky part of catching good perch isn’t so much fooling them as finding them.
When they ‘switch on’ for an hour or less it’s easy to miss the party, especially if there are half-a-dozen likely spots to explore. Today, though, I would be able to cover them all – giving me a great chance of a bite.
I guess the most common approach with worm baits is to reach for the leger rod. Of course, a quivertip takes more than its fair share of perch, but no matter how light a test curve you use there will always be an element of resistance when the glass tip pulls round.
This effect is magnified when fishing close in under the rod-tip, so while I had never perch fished this stretch of river before, my instinct pointed towards the float.
So it was my 14ft Acolyte Plus rod that I plucked from the truck before heading to the first swim where a bush kissed the surface directly downstream.
Trotting was possible but perch prefer a static bait, so I rigged up to lay on. On to the classic 4.4lb Drennan Floatfish line went a broad-shouldered Avon float with a chain of bulk shot just off the deck. A couple of No6 shot, plus
the weight of the worm, would keep everything static.
I was fishing well overdepth with a bow in the line so the float sat slightly uncocked.
Should a bite occur it would sit up straight, then sink gently out of sight – long before anything registered on the rod-tip.
My hooklength was 4.4lb Supplex fluorocarbon to a Kamasan B983. A whole worm would require a size 4 but for half, which I would begin with, a size 8 was perfect.
I have two ways of hooking lobworms, the first involving a whole one broken at the saddle and both parts nicked on at the juicy end. This time, however, I flicked half-a-worm downstream, again attached at the broken end.
To stop the point spinning back round into the flesh, a common problem, a single red maggot tipped off the bait.
FEED SPARINGLY
With the first cast made I fed the swim sparingly but regularly with casters and red maggots.
Hopefully I would tease out some stripeys from beneath their cover. This happened within minutes but alas, the culprit was tiny greedy perch of wasplike proportions. This situation repeated itself on the next three casts, and I had seen enough. No big perch would permit these whipper-snappers to get to the food first, so it was time to move.
Sometimes being spoilt for choice is a bad thing. With a tempting swim every 20 yards or so I could be here for a week and not fully cover every one. All I could do was work diligently through them.
I had one swim left before I needed to leave at lunchtime. The river bent hard left, and here the bank was so high I could barely reach the water with my landing net. On a positive note, the flow was being deflected and a deep hole had been created with a bush above it.
Here I opted for a bait dropper to land the groundbait in a heap. Then, again laying on with the float, I allowed the worm to just kiss the bottom. This was fishing in the last chance saloon!
Within a minute the first of six bites came, each perch making off with the worm with such confidence that the float only stopped disappearing into the hole when I struck. Every fight was tackle-testing, to say the least!
I had a grandstand view of each fish as a headdress of spines, blood-red fins and big bold stripes was drawn to the surface. My only regret was that I hadn’t found them sooner.
Bigger perch might come later in the season, but for now I was happy to wait and enjoy what autumn had to offer. There’s never a dull moment for the all-round angler, so pencil in a perch trip and enjoy some early action.