Fathers Day

 Normally on Fathers Day, dad and I would have met up on the riverbank somewhere before sun rise and then spent the morning fishing and chatting together. Catching a fish was never important, just being there together. Obviously this year that wasn't to be, he definitely wouldn't have wanted me to sit around moping though, he would have wanted me to go and get after those tench again, so that's what I did. I made sure to spend some time reminiscing about the good times we spent together and even took a bottle of (nonalcoholic) beer to raise to the old man.

Cheers dad x

I wasn't going to mess about this time, I went armed with a trio of Greys 2lb barbel rods and Shimano reels loaded with 12lb mainline, no more messing about with perch rigs. Their time will come, it's too weedy to fish light enough for them to work efficiently at the moment. There were only two reasonable spots available to fish in my chosen swim, the same two as last time strangely enough. One in a rare clear spot and one on top of a gravel bar. 10 hours drifted by in the dappled sunlight under the trees before anything happened, a screaming run from the rod fishing the top of the gravel bar took me completely by surprise and resulted in a cracking fish of 7lb 1oz. I had absolutely no confidence in that rod, having never hooked a fish off of one of the bars in this lake. Shows you what i know!

Magic.

This place has got right under my skin

All in all a wonderful way to spend a day reminiscing about the old man and a cracking fish to finish things off as well. Take your kids fishing if you can, they will remember those times for all of their lives. I know I do. 

Tight Lines,

Benno.

Thoughts on ledgering for Perch

I am well aware that the title of this post has no relevance to the tench fishing project in which I am currently involved, it is however faintly connected. As promised, a visit to the syndicate on Sunday morning was called for, armed with my two newly refurbished glass fibre MKiv's, it took me a good couple of hours to locate a some spots on which to present a bait properly, although the whole place is like a giant egg box of gravel bars, the fish don't seem to venture to the tops of the bars, they like grubbing around in the silt and the thick weed either side of the gravel. The fish finder is invaluable in this situation as you can cast it around without causing too much disturbance to the water and roughly locate the weed-free areas before fine tuning the distances with a marker float. One absolute screamer of a take at 07:30am resulted in a very old fishing rod being bent double whilst trying to stop a fairly small tench from completely burying itself in the weed, the fish was eventually landed successfully but a lesson was well learned, theres a time and a place for vintage fishing gear, and that time and place is not in a weed choked gravel pit with the potential of hooking an 11lb tench (or a 55lb carp for that matter!)

5lb 8oz. I was lucky to get this fish in on those old elastic bands.

 As I was fishing with lobworms coupled with small pva bags of chopped worm dried out in krill ground bait, I was more than half expecting a visit from a perch or two, it took until 2pm before they found me, but find me they did. Three perfect perch bites, beautiful slow rise on the long drop swingers, all three missed. Did they feel the resistance of the rig, or perhaps the line drag or even the weight of the swingers? Were they just small perch? Could I have done anything better? This may well be a problem familiar to some. I imagine anyone who has fished a place where live baits are banned or lure fishing feels futile in the vast emptiness of a 44 acre pit will have probably missed as many perch bites as they have connected with. I am genuinely interested to hear from anyone who feels like they have come up with a method of long range ledger fishing for perch which has a better than 50/50 hook-rate without deep hooking the fish. The obvious answer otherwise is just to make the hook links two feet long, but this means that the fish can swallow the bait before you ever get so much as a bleep from the alarms. People will often say things to me like "it’s the change in resistance that puts them off, not the actual resistance", now this sounds good in theory, but in my opinion, I’m not convinced. A perch knows what a natural bait feels like when it picks it up from the bottom of a lake and is more than happy to drop anything that doesn’t feel quite right. Last season I played around with using light braided mainline with two meters of light fluorocarbon as a leader, free running rigs and a 12" hook length, the braid helped a lot because it wants to float, as opposed to mono which lays on the bottom and creates a lot more drag, this coupled with a tinfoil swinger did start to notice an increase in hook-ups, but not consistent enough to be satisfying. All of the writing on the subject seems to say the same thing, perch hate resistance and will drop a bait if it doesn’t feel right, so just use live-baits and they will smash in to them with enthusiasm... believe me, if I was allowed to, that’s exactly what I’d be doing too, but the rules are the rules and I shall enjoy the challenge of trying to solve the puzzle in front of me. 

My PB at 3:14, caught from our local river in a big flood 

 As far as I'm aware, theres never been a genuine 4lb perch caught from the syndicate, theres been rumours, but no photos or evidence. My good friend Andy Larkins has definitely caught a 3:14 and my very first fish on trying for them was 3:11, followed by a number of other 3s and big 2s, so a 4 is a realistic target, especially seeing as Andy and I are the only two people silly enough to try and target them.

The biggest I’ve managed from the syndicate so far at 3:11 

 Please leave me a comment if you have any thoughts on baits, rigs or indication for the Perch, or anything else that I might have missed for that matter. I did give prawns a go, thinking that the heavier bait would negate some of the unnatural weight of the rig, but they didn’t seem to be interested in them. I wont be targeting perch specifically until the autumn, but that doesn't stop my brain from thinking about them all of the time. 

 Tight lines, 

 Benno.

A bit of an update

Since my last blog offering, life has very much got in the way of my fishing career. Being self employed, it's important that I make hay whilst the sun shines and the sun has been shining brightly in my little plumbing world. I have managed a couple of trips down to the syndicate, unfortunately, the tench spawned early this year due to the sudden increase in water temperature caused by the tropical spell of sunshine we had in May, this coupled with the explosion of weed growth and natural food availability has made the fishing even more tricky. I did manage to land a couple of tench, the best of which being a 6lb 8oz male fish, but alas, nothing which troubled the 10lb target I’ve set myself down there. The 7lber I had caught in the first blog has been the biggest so far this season. 

6lb 8oz of syndicate tench

I've been able to drop in for some short sessions with the float rod on one of our club waters and have managed to land a couple of tench, the biggest one going just over 5lb, the size of the fish isn’t really relevant if you can catch them on a centerpin and a float rod. With that in mind, I’m heading back down the syndicate tomorrow armed with two glass fibre Bruce and Walker MKiv’s and one split cane Bruce and Walker MKiv, believe it or not, the glass fibre rods are mine and have just been resto-modded with Fuji reel seats, the split cane is of course Dads, I’ve teamed the split cane up with a JW Youngs Rolling Pin to try and at least make it look like I’m using an appropriate vintage reel, his other two split canes are so worn out in the handles that I’ve had to drop them off at the rod builders for some new cork. Don’t worry, I won’t get Fuji reel seats put on them, I’ll carry on with the old rings. 

5lb of gold on the pin

As you probably know already, photography was a huge passion of Dads, I can remember him sitting for hours by the Valerian plants outside the house trying to get shots of the hummingbird hawk moths, I’ve been doing the same recently, but with an IPhone instead of a digital camera, I’ll be honest, I’m pretty pleased with the results, just gutted that I can’t show him. 

Hopefully I’ll have something else to write about after tomorrows outing, I’m going for an all-natural bait approach, low resistance rigs and bite indication with a view to potentially hooking the perch, eels, tench, carp or anything else that likes a juicy worm… Tufties are a distinct possibility as well (as is a blank!) 

Tight lines,

Benno.