Autumn and winter perch part 2 (river sessions)

I haven’t been able to perch fish my local rivers as much as I would of liked this winter as they always seem to be in a constant state of flood.

Living in an area surrounded by spate rivers you become accustomed to them but this year has definitely been the most challenging for a number of years.

The image above shows the recent levels during a typical winter week on one of my favourite rivers. Targeting predators at anything over 0.8 meters is a real struggle, (pissing in the wind springs to mind). As you can imagine opportunities to target these fish are very limited especially when you factor in family life and 60hr working weeks.

Anyway I’ve managed two river perch sessions so far, one on my closest river which as usual was a bit of a struggle, small live baits fished close to deep marginal snags when unscathed.

A week or so later I headed down to one of my favourite rivers, I’ve never really fished for predators on this river, usually targeting the barbel and chub but I know it holds good perch and pike. 

After catching a few small silvers I chose a peg for the short session with features both up and downstream. A small gudgeon on a float paternoster upstream and a small maggot feeder with worm flicked under the downstream willow. 

It took half an hour or so to get some interest on the feeder a 12oz perch was the first in the net, shortly followed by one of around a pound.

I was being pestered by small jacks on the live bait rod, I was using a light wire trace so all were landed without to much fuss but the distractions did lead to a few missed bites on the feeder.

Eventually a better fish on the feeder, initially I thought it was a chub but eventually a nice perch surfaced, easily my largest from this river.

2lb 9oz, a new river best

Bites were hard to come by after the two pounder, a good wrap around was missed whilst landing a jack. I switched to a larger lobworms as dusk approached, hoping for a final chance of a bigger fish. The bite came but it was the smallest of the day.

One of 3 jacks landed, a nice looking fish 

Hopefully I can get on this river for a longer session in good conditions soon as I think I’d be able to put a few more fish on the bank, maybe get closer to a three pounder.