Pleasing percidaes

Sunday Morning I joined forces with Andy to have a session on a section of canal that is rumoured to have produced some very large roach recently. Meeting in a lay by in the dark early on Sunday morning it felt very clandestine but eventually Andy arrived little late after a bit of a bait disaster at home.

I always approach a new section of canal with a little trepidation as in my opinion it inevitably goes one of two ways! Mine and Andy's approach for the day was pole fishing bread punch down the track, though I did feed a second line with a generous helping of chopped worm in a different area and chucked out a dead bait under a float near the far bank, both as back ups in case the roach fishing did not go well.

After a bite less hour I had no confidence that the bread punch was going to produce at all, as between the two of us we only one roach to show for our efforts which Andy had caught, and that was smaller than the dead bait I had hooked on my predator rig earlier. Moving onto my chopped worm line turned out to be the best decision I have made in a good many years of fishing and after a small perch grabbed my worm hook bait on the drop on my first put in, my second resulted in a perch ten times bigger than the first. Seeing the fish in the net my eyes were bulging and I quickly slipped it into the keep net to see if any more were hanging around.

They were! and by cupping copious amounts of bait in every time the bites began to dwindle, the perch kept coming. Half way through the morning from the corner of my eye I saw the dead bait float start bobbing before moving off slowly. After waiting an age for the bite to develop my strike pulled the bait clean out of the water. But I knew only too well if it was, as I suspected a zander, a second run was not that far away and it wasn't. This time a mental zed tried it's best to throw my hook thrashing around on the top. On the bank it turned out to be the angriest Zander I have ever encountered which turned out to be rather a help when we had our picture taken together and it posed a treat.

I did land a second Zander of a pound which took a huge lob worm on the perch line that stunted the perch sport. By dinner time my bait was gone and the only thing left to do was pull the net and go mad with the camera as opportunities like these don't come round every time we go fishing!

Eight fat perch, four over a pound.

All the big ones were undoubtedly related.

The two biggest, the top fish was just scraping 2lb and the bottom fish was a fraction over 2lb.