Progress With Perch

[Newt]

Vagabond - I love your gear. The old faithful 300 is still a great reel and I have always liked the rods where you could mount the reel to balance things as you wanted.

 

That reel mount is hard to find these days except on U/L rods unless you want to build your own or have one custom done.

[Alan Pearce]

Interesting stuff Vagabond and well done with the captures. I too have found differing shapes of perch from the same fishery on quiet a few waters I perch fish. I'm not 100% certain but almost, that you will find that the blunt nosed fish are the oldest and biggest. The sharper more streamlined fish are relatively young and seldom exceed two and a half pounds in weight. On two new waters I have fished this season I have noticed fish which appear to be changing from the streamline shape to bulkier deep bodied fish with the start of a pronouced hump forming behind their heads. These fish are mainly upper two's to low 3's, thereafter all the larger fish are of the blunt head deep bodied shape.

 

Therefore I have concluded it is an age thing, just like me in fact, bigger in the belly and thicker in the neck and a bit ragged in other areas.

 

Perch markings and colouration can change quite rapidly so if there are no other distinct markings to note look carefully at the gill covers. These I have found act like finger prints and close up photographs of these can really help in the indentification of individual perch.

 

Recently two pals and I have been perching a new undiscovered water of about an acre and almost every time we fished we caught between us two or three 3lb plus fish up to 3lb-10ozs along with just the odd low two pounder. After half a dozen sessions we started to compare notes and photographs and found that they were all repeat captures. Since our discovery we have left the water alone not wishing to keep catching the same fish and to move on to pastures new. However we will return next autumn to see if these fish have grown any bigger, which I hope they will.

 

The same water a couple of months before we first fished it did produce a perch of just over four which was weighed properly during a club match. I know from personal experience that perch can vary as much as 25% in weight, not down to spawn but by gorging on lots of prey fish. Back in the mid 1990's one perch that friends and I knew well would often be caught at weights varying from 3lb-15ozs to 4lb-05ozs. One September day I caught this very same fish at just over 4lb-12oz. It was this that set me on the path to research weight variations amongst known fish.

 

To me this sort of stuff makes fishing even more interesting and I would be interested in your findings over the next few seasons, if you continue to fish there.

 

Alan.

[Steve Burke]

I'd echo what Alan says about the weight of a given perch varying enormously due to what it's digesting. Perch have huge mouths for their size, and a 4lb perch can COMFORTABLY manage an 8oz roach. Indeed I once had a perch of 10" in my aquarium swallow a 5" gudgeon!

 

So when you see a goodish roach hightailing it away don't assume it's a pike attacking it. It's could well be a big perch.

 

Certainly if you see a small fish repeatedly skipping out of the water it's odds on that it's fleeing from a perch. I believe this is a good escape mechanism as, due to their unusual swim bladder arrangement, perch can't change depth rapidly without having to return to the original depth.

 

[ 08 March 2002, 10:38 PM: Message edited by: Steve Burke ]

[Vagabond]

Thanks for your replies, Alan and Steve - I'd hoped for something like that when I started the thread - so far, I have had no repeat captures at Deerdrink, when I do, it will be time for pastures new. Alans point on the shape being age/size related is worth looking at in other waters - it may be this simple answer is the right one, rather than invoking sub-speciation as an explanation. The jury is still out though.

 

I have rather neglected perch of recent years - it was only meeting up with Steve Burke that fired me up to have a go..... and it was due to Steve that I chose Deerdrink - originally went there to try out maggot flavours on the prolific roach there, and noticed soimething was having a go at the roach as I slipped them back - so thanks Steve, twice.

[Alan Pearce]

Vagabond, how many different 2lb plus perch do you think you havecaughtsofar from this water? I have fished a lot of small waters for perch during the past ten years and in my experience I would reckon on there being a maximun of around ten or twelve 2's, two or three three's and if you are really lucky, one maybe two four's.

 

I would be interested in your findings or thoughts on this.

 

Alan.

[Vagabond]

Alan, thanks for input - you confirm what I am intuitively guessing about the population. Of the fish taken so far (1 just under 2lb, two of three pound and the rest between two and three) I have not identified a repeat capture - but one picture is still in camera, so I can't vouch for that.

 

What is interesting is that this morning I had three runs (the most I have had in a session there) but all dropped the bait - could be they are wising up!

 

It was very windy this morning , and I have noticed before a good SW wind is favourable here - but at other venues Steve has found otherwise.

 

The other unusual feature is time of takes - early afternoon (2 to 3pm) last autumn, but between 11am and 2pm this winter. Goes dead in the evening, although as I now concentrate on what I have found the peak times, an element of self-fulfilling prophecy is beginning to creep in.

 

Keep in touch - there is a lot of interesting stuff to discover I hope.

[Alan Pearce]

Vagabond, I have never experienced perch wising up to getting caught, not to live baits anyway. There again I don't fish waters that see any attention from other perch anglers. I have certainly caught the same fish week in week out as explained before, so they have had a six day break in between. Having said all that some of these waters see a lot of attention from anglers generally fishing for what comes along, mainly with maggots and it is very rare for them to catch any of the bigger perch. So yes they probably do wise up to some baits, then again it is probable that big perch only feed on bigger food items like fish and big lob worms. Thinking about it I can remember a water we fished six or seven years ago, where the big perch (3lb plus) would take a big lob as readily as a live bait. However after a coupleof months fishing for them they did seem to wise up to the worm. Air injecting them so they rose a few inches off of the bottom did seem to give the bait a brief new lease of life but then again short fast takes became the order of the day.

 

On this water like some others I have perch fished, freshly presented dead baits were a complete waste of time, however on some others I know they can be caught on deads but not anyway near as effective I might add.

 

As far as weather conditions are concerned I have found bright windy days best especially if there are lots of clouds scudding across the sky giving frequent bright and dull periods. As far as times are concerned I have found dawn to be very good, then late morning to around lunch time. One water I have been fishing during the past two months has shown a real hot feeding from 2pm until just before dusk. I have never favoured the dusk period but Steve on the other hand rates it highly. Perhaps if we compared notes closely we could make some sense of this. Out of interest what is the water like where you are fishing and what tackle / rigs do you use?

 

Alan.

[Vagabond]

The water is very clear, despite having an inlet stream coming off the Ashdowns sands (really alternate layers of sands and clays) Most of the catchmenrt is woodland tho' so not a lot of erosion because the soil is protected by litter layer.

 

I use freelined lives, with a "float" about half the size of a matchstick 5 ft from the size 6 hook.

 

Interesting that your optimum times and conditions seem to be similar to mine

 

BTW I note your comment about taking a close-up photo of the opercular - good idea which I will adopt. Will also photo BOTH sides of the fish - that will double my apparent catch-rate at a stroke

[Alan Pearce]

You are obviously fishing fairly shallow water at close range with the bait on the bottom, are there many depth variations or features? I have never found big perch concerned with hooks but line thickness is another kettle of fish on some waters I have fished. The difference between a 5lb hook link and three, I found doubled my takes. Obviously this can only be done on waters safe enough to do so. My preference is to float paternoster with the bait fishing two feet off bottom. Main reel line is 4 or 5lb test, hook link 3lb and a bomb link of 2lb test. The float is normally a one or one and a quarter round 'pilot' style (cause I like the look of them) fished just on the surface with the line tight to the rod. I always use with this set up an electronic alarm (Delkim) in conjunction with a Ringle bobbin. Most times I see the float disapear, but being a bit of a day dreamer the other indicators are a safety factor, preventing deep hooking. Talking of which, nowadays I always fish the live baits hooked between the head and the dorsal fin. I found that lip hooking occaisionaly resulted in deep hooking, whilst hooking just under the dorsal missed the odd take. These are on 4 or five inch long baits. The most effective baits I have found to be roach but I like small perch or gudgeon because they are less erratic and want to swim towards the bottom resulting in less tangling of the paternoster. Perch will not tolerate resistance but with a small float and lead just heavy enough to sink every thing, I have found that even if a little twisted up the perch will take effectivly and without fear / resistance.

 

Alan.

[Steve Burke]

Alan and I have often dicussed perch feeding times over the years and our experiences on this matter haven't always co-incided, although on just about everything else we're in agreement.

 

I've lost count of the number of stillwaters I've fished for big perch, but on every single shallow one the best time in winter has been at dusk. Friends fishing the same Kentish waters all totally agree. In fact, I'd rate the half hour either side of sunset to be better than the whole of the rest of the day put together.

 

The only possible exception may be dawn, but I no longer fish winter dawns as I'm then too tired when the peak feeding time of dusk comes along. When I did, I still found dusk far superior in winter, although dawn was usually better than during the day. OTOH, in summer dawn is often the best time.

 

I've found very deep waters to be totally different. Here the perch fed in deep water during the middle of the day and shallower water at dusk. The critical factor appeared to be the underwater light intensity.

 

For instance, boat fishing at Bewl Reservoir we could perhaps catch at 18 feet on a foggy autumn morning. Often within minutes the sun would break through and it was as if a light switch were thrown. Despite trying deeper, our swim would go totally dead. However, another of our group fising half a mile away in 25 feet of water would suddenly find their swim coming alive, having been totally biteless before in all depths.

 

I don't think that the fish had changed depth because, as I mentioned earlier, perch can't change depth rapidly without having to return pretty quickly to the original level. Rather I think the shoals were at different depths and turned on or off the feed according to the prevailing underwater light.

 

This is developing into a very interesting topic! One quick question, how deep is Deerdrink Dam?