Vegetarian Perch

Bait for this weeks trip was; two pints hemp; pint and a half maggots and a tin of sweet corn. The intention was to float fish corn or tare over hemp for the better roach and maggot feeder if the former wasn't working too well. After a slightly precarious wander through the woods, the muddy paths all slope towards the river, I decided to try one of the earlier and shallower swims as it didn't seem to effected by the wind.

Stick and pin was to be the first line of attack and with eight and a half foot of water things were quite pleasant. Except I hadn't had a bite after an hour. A change to maggot produced a couple of minnows and a micro roach, before I latched onto some thing bigger. As I got it near the surface it was grabbed by a pike. As I got it under the rod tip the line parted and the whole rig knotted itself round the rod. I decided to move on to one of the deeper swims and come back to this one later, after tossing in some more hemp.

In the next swim I started with maggot feeder, which produced a steady flow of small gudgeon. for a while before the bites dried up. I stuck a bit of corn on the hook and set about the float rod. I still got the occasional bite, which resulted in a gudgeon, but instead of the usual bouncing tip they were now a steady pull as if some weed had snagged the line. With the wind now gusting downstream I decided a waggler approach was probably best, so replaced the 'pin with a 506. After a few trots own to check the depth, I'd st the hook just off the bottom, the line pin decided not to engage. Poking around inside the reel I couldn't see a problem. Having hand-lined the float back some twenty yards I chucked the feeder rod back out and contemplated my next move. As I carefully hand wound the line back on the spool, the tip of the feeder round shot round and the rod took a good bend, before going slack. Thinking I'd missed the bite I finished  winding the line on the spool before retrieving the feeder. There was clearly something still on, it felt like a decent gudgeon, but turned out to be a dinky little barbel of around half a pound. Probably the smallest I've ever caught and my first Derwent barbel of the season. Over the next twenty minutes I got two more bites on the feeder.

Using the spare spool from the feeder reel I had another go with the waggler setup. This wasn't the best reel for trotting as it has rather a long stem and even with the spool all the way back it was still a stretch to the lip. Still I managed three, pound plus perch on corn and one on maggot along with a few dace. The perch in this stretch fight like fish twice the weight and you could become slightly disappointed when they surface. The largest at one and three quarter pound had me believing I was onto a new PB. This came to an end when another pike appeared and grabbed a fish I was reeling in. This time it let go and I retrieved a rather sorry looking roach. Which, after a quick photo, swam away quite strongly leaving a trail of blood, which I saw the pike follow. I assume the roach would be a goner.

 


















After  this I didn't get any more bites so moved back to the first swim. It was equally disappointing this time around as well. Again it just produced a couple of gudgeon and minnows. I even tried brambles as a bait, with out any success. though. Time to go home.

 























One thing I (re)learned - don't tweet a photo when there is a very weak signal, it doesn't half drain the battery. I had a right pastime getting it charged again and restarted. I ended up having to do a factory reset and restoring everything, which meant I lost a few of the day's photos. Inspecting the 506, at home, I found a short piece of very fine wire trapped in the mechanism, so that's back functioning. Don't know where the hell the wire came from.