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.