Jig Fishing For Perch.

So today I headed out in search of some Perch, I went back to the water works at Longham, as you will have seen by now if you are someone who has read my blog before this is somewhere I quite like to spend my time when targeting Perch, there is a few reasons for this but the main ones being its ten minutes from my house and the average stamp of fish is around the lb mark, with 2lb fish coming out more and more now and with the odd 3lb beast being reported to. The aim of todays session was to put some new techniques into practise, recently as you may know I have joined a group called Lure Nuts, since being accepted into the family I have decided to focus most if not all of my fishing time into lure fishing, another thing you will have noticed on reading my past posts is that lure fishing is something I was very much getting into anyway but this has sparked a whole new level of interest for me! As I was saying I decided to go jig fishing but this time try to do it properly, what I mean by this is putting 'proper' jig fishing retrieves and things into practise, I have used shads and jig heads before but mainly casting and counting down before straight retrieving, I also used the sink and draw retrieve quite often to, as I said since joining the group I have wanted to do more and more lure fishing but also spend more time getting it right instead of all day chucking and winding as if I was using a spinner! I have spent a whole lot of time on youtube lately watching different lure fishing techniques and in particular researching jig fishing, after many a conversation with myself over the last week or so I decided that jig fishing was going to be my starting point and have got a lot of different trips planned over the next few weeks to learn different things, something I have not done on here before is to ask for you guys advice on stuff but please if you know of any good youtube videos, articles or anything else you feel might help me comment below so I can check it out!

Onto the fishing then, when I arrived today I was in luck as a few of the guys that work for Bournemouth water were here, one guy in particular was Ian who is the head bailiff on the reservoir up the road, I have fished the reservoir a fair bit now and have gotten to know Ian quite well, I explained to him todays plan as I signed in and he waited for me, once I had done he told me to follow him and he took me and gave me a guided tour, even though I have fished here numerous times the information he shared with me could prove invaluable on the correct days in the future, he told me things about deep areas and also about some hidden underwater structure which as we all know is the type of area you are going to find Perch. Once my tour was over and Ian went back to work I headed over to what I call the fish stairs and began to rig up, as I was going to be starting inline with the weir so I decided to go with a 10g jig head to stop it being washed all over the place when retrieving, I hooked on a small white Berkley shad from the Berkley Perch pack I picked up in my local Go Outdoors store a few weeks back, to start with I dropped the lure over the edge onto a patch of gravel I could see plain as day, I began to move the lure backwards and forwards with different lifts and things on the rod tip to see what it did in the water, about five minutes past by and once I had finished playing I was more than happy I could use the lure the way I wanted to and made my first cast. Another thing I have decided I want to work on is my discipline when it comes to searching the water as up until now I have very much been one of those people who looks and says ok I'm going to cast here now and end up fishing random spots never remembering where I cast to or when, that though as of today is going to change! I made a series of casts in a fan from right to left so as to cover all the water in front of me, on my third cast I missed a bite so decided to go back over the spot again, this was a idea that paid off for me as once I had retrieved back to roughly the same place I missed the bite I had another this time though I struck into the fish and it felt a good one, after a few minutes I was reaching for my net and unfortunately almost as soon as the fish hit the surface my hook pulled. Gutted but determined not to let it stop me from my days learning I cast to the next spot in the sequence I had laid out in my head, no bite on that one but on the next I was back into another fish, once again it didn't feel a bad size and after a minute or two I finally managed to get one in the net.

As I said in my previous post my Perch pb is 1lb 13oz and this fish wasn't near that so I didn't weigh it, I simply enjoyed looking at it for a little while took a few pictures of and with it and then returned it back to the water. I have now officially christened my new net and unhooking mat that my other half had bought me a few days ago and I could not be happier with the session so far, I guess I would have been a bit happier if I landed the first fish to but I did not expect to be getting any bites for a while as I tried to get used to the new style of fishing. I continued casting in my fan and on what was to be the last cast with this lure I had a bite from something much bigger, I knew at this moment I was either playing a British record Perch or I had hooked a Pike, I mean to be honest I just knew I had hooked into a Pike not a massive one but again I was happy to have hooked another fish, after a short while of playing the fish as I was using my ultra light set up I got it to a point where it was wallowing on the surface ready to be netted, you can imagine my utter heartbreak as my shad fell in slow motion from the fishes mouth and I desperately tried to reach it with the net, unfortunately I couldn't reach and to add to insult to injury the fish stayed in the same spot for what felt like a age before sinking back to the depths, I'm even sure it winked at me before doing so! With this cast being the last in the sequence I changed up the lure, I stuck with the same packet of shads just changed the colour, I went with a green coloured one I would describe it as a Perch pattern but I'm probably wrong. I began to cast in the same fan as before starting back from the beginning again, things started off slow with this lure as after the first four casts I didn't even have a knock, however on the fifth cast I hooked another fish but this time I could tell it was smaller, when it surfaced though I was happy to see it was the target species again.

Although this one was a lot smaller it was in near mint condition only for a split in the peck fin shown in the picture above, this fish was a little bit smaller than the average stamp that are normally caught from this water but to be honest for me its not all about the size, I know I mention my pb and things but that really is only part of why I fish, personally I believe that if you worry to much about personal bests and things then you end up loosing a lot of the appreciation for the smaller details and as this fish shows they don't have to be big to be beautiful!

         Thanks for reading once again guys I hope you enjoyed, I have a whole lot more fishing planned in the very near future so I'm hoping to bring you more regular posts again for a little while at least. Until next time stay safe everyone and good luck with whatever your out to achieve.