Once I had made it to the water works I started out by having a quick walk around the areas I know have produced a few Perch in the past, I could not believe my eyes when the first area I walked up to had around five fish that were clearly 2lb and over, in the middle of these though was something in a whole other league, it is by far the biggest Perch I have ever laid eyes on and I could not get my rod set up fast enough! Finally all rigged up and 1.5" Ballzy hooked on I was ready for the coming battle trying to hook one of these great big fish. I'm not sure weather any of you know but my personal best that I caught at the end of last year fell 3oz short of being a 'specimen' fish at 1lb 13oz so I was super excited at the prospect of maybe landing a specimen Perch any minute. I started out by making a cast around a yard past the fish I could see so as not to spook them, also standing well back being very carful not to put any shadow over the water to maximise my chances of hooking one, I then very slowly reeled back towards them putting tiny little lifts and jigs in the lure as I went along, I got to about a foot away from the shoal and one of the fish took a immediate interest in when I had put in front of it, he sat watching my lure for a few seconds edging slowly closer to it when finally a short sharp lunge forward and he had engulfed my bait and hook, I gave what I thought was a good firm strike and off it shot unfortunately spooking all the other fish away before shaking its head and my hook all in one movement. For any of you who have been in the same situation before, probably most of you, you will feel my pain not only the loss of the fish but the fact that for quite some time now there was no point at all in fishing the same swim.
So I was now on the move, there is another small wall opposite where I was fishing just a short walk over the bridge, I could again see a load of fish in the first swim I came to however this time they all looked to be a whole lot smaller. I changed over to a smaller 1" version of the Ballzy worm as after loosing that fish I just wanted to land anything now just to cheer myself up a bit, I dropped in just over the edge right next to a small reed bed and with in seconds I had a small knock on the tip directly followed by a much bigger one, once again I stuck into a fish this time it was a lot smaller but that was not my concern I was fully focused on getting the fish on my unhooking mat and taking a look at it. I think to call the winding in of this fish anything like a scrap or a fight would be a bit ridiculous as I may have only felt it shake its head once in the three seconds it took to bring in, to be fair though the little guy was scale perfect and although nowhere near as big as the one I had lost I did not care as for me I really do mainly enjoy looking at the fish I catch.
After spending a bit of time admiring the little guy I slipped him back and as you may have guessed from the picture I forgot to mention that by this point Mark had already arrived and was there in perfect time to take a picture of my monster for me. He decided to cast his feeder in just up from where I was fishing and was very happily catching plenty of Dace, Roach and small Chub for most of the evening and if he was in a match he would have posted a very respectable weight. So now that mission was accomplished on the drop shot front I decided to do what we went there for and went about setting up my feeder rod, after three or four casts and only managing two Minnows and a Bleak I decided enough was enough and that I had well and truly been beaten by Mark today, (good job we didn't put any money on it). I decided to start fishing the drop shot again for the last hour or so as we were only there for a few hours, I decided to head up to a pipe that was sticking out of the wall that was pushing loads of water out of it and really churning up the bottom of the river, I went back in with the 1.5" worm and with in literally seconds I was hooked into something a little more substantial, after a short this time I can say scrap as the fish tried to take me under the pipe and into a few different weed beds I landed the fish, still not a personal best but as I said before I like to look at the fish more than anything else and this fish was in pristine condition. I do not like to use the term it looks like it never been caught, to be honest with you if you are unhooking a fish and it still looks like it has never been caught then you release it in that condition the next person to catch it is going to say the exact same thing and so on. Any way now things were getting there and I felt I could maybe finally say I'm getting the hang of drop shotting! I was over the moon with my fish and popped him back and sat back for a little while looking at the pictures Mark had taken for me, after admiring the fish for a while I put one of the pictures on Istagram and get the rod back in the water.
After a short time fishing the same spot that had just produced I came to the decision something was wrong so sat for a little while looking at what my line was doing in the flow and things. I had noticed that if I let the line out slowly by the pipe then my drop shot moved slowly sideways through the flow of the river and as it got around about a yard off the bank I started getting a few knocks again. Another thing I had noticed was that since all the commotion of playing my last fish there was a lot of jack Pike jumping a bit further out than that. It was from this I decided that maybe the Perch were trying to take my lure only to spot a Pike and retreat, don't know how much of that is true but precision guess work was all I had to go on at the time. My next move was a simple decision I had now caught two Perch and if there is Pike to be caught I am never one to shy away from the challenge, I decided to bypass the pipe water pushing my rig out and simply flicked it out about a yard and a half to where the bites roughly stopped, This proved to be the right thing to do as I hadn't even managed a jig before the rod completely doubled over. This one could be called a scrap and the fish well and truly beat me up weed bed to weed bed it went, I absolutely love this ultra light style of fishing as you get to feel literally everything it is great and if you have not tried it I strongly suggest you do so! Not long later and I had a Pike netted for me by Mark, He put the net down on my unhooking mat for me and assumed his position as camera man once again.
Once again guys thanks for reading I hope you enjoyed it, I am looking forward to writing the next one almost as much as I am getting out fishing! I have a few different sessions coming up so something new to write about, I am on another LRF practise session tomorrow, Sunday I am off on a match fishing session on a snake lake, this is something I have not done in a long time and I am really looking forward to it and will be writing about it so hopefully that is something you would like to read and my finally I have a full Carp fishing weekend planned with Mark next weekend so that will be something different again. So I have a action packed couple of weeks coming up and can't wait to get out fishing again. I really hope also that you like the sound of the up coming content to but until next time tight lines all!
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