Well....I did catch perch
Entry posted by Rusty
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Speen Moors, Sunday 23rd January 2011
Time spent at this water is never wasted, most clubs have a premier venue and in my opinion this is the one for Newbury Angling Association. Despite that apart from some good perch I haven’t done very well here at all, I’ve only caught two decent sized chub and one of those was on a lobworm when after perch. It doesn’t seem to matter though, just the thought of fishing at Speen fills me with optimism and today was no different. With my new found interest in water temperature my intention was to float fish lobs on the canal section albeit in less than ideal conditions. I’d had a look on Saturday and my chosen stretch was covered with a very thin film of ice which wobbled when I threw a small stone onto it…a bit like cling film stretched over the canal, not good at all. The backup plan was to trot the nearby river so if it all went wrong on the canal the day wouldn’t be a total loss.
Sunday dawned with me about 5 miles along the B4494 with another 5 still to go, I’d overslept. Oh well, perhaps the perch will oversleep too. Thankfully a relatively mild night had seen off the ice and the morning was overcast so there was still hope, this quickly diminished though when I dropped the probe into the water and measured 39 degrees F, no warmer than the river on Friday. I spent a couple of hours on the canal trying a few swims along a section which is lined by reeds on both banks. The reeds halve the width of the water and it looks a perfect place for perch but today it wasn’t perfect for anything. I may have had one bite but even this might have been a particularly strong lobworm trying to make his getaway.
So on to the river where the brown trout were far more accommodating, stupidly so as usual but it was good to get the centrepin twirling again and nice to catch something from a couple of new swims. I fished the swim where Bob James ‘nicked’ Chris Yates’ chub while the latter was making the tea, it still looks so chubby but perhaps trotting maggot isn’t the best way to fish it because I had no joy.
The last hour or so was reserved for the lock cut where I used up the lobs and caught small perch almost every cast. Why is it that small perch will feed in any conditions but the larger specimens are a lot more fussy? The last encounter of the day was with a youngster of about five out walking with his dad, he won it by a country mile;
Youngster: “Hello”
Me: “Hello”
Youngster: “have you caught anything?”
Me: “Yes, lots of small perch”
Youngster: “Did you put them back into the water?”
Me: “Yes”
Youngster “Why?”
Me: “Because then they can grow into big fish”
Youngster: “Can you eat them when they are big fish?”
Me: “No”
Youngster “Why?”
I looked at his dad (who had a wry smile on his face) and figured there were plenty more 'whys' to come. I decided to bail out.
Me: “Because they taste horrible, you wouldn’t like them”
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