Paved with perch

      A pass for two hours to go perch fishing on the drain and to escape the family preparations for Christmas. The weather is dull, grey, damp and cold but it's better than ticking off the must do list before next week, and with considerable will power the pike tackle is left behind so that I am not distracted.
      When I arrive at the farm it is desolate and not even Bastard Barry is around but even at half past one it is gloomy enough for the farmyard security lights to come on as I drive in and park the car.
      Tackled up and out goes the float and in a flash the worm is devoured by a hungry perch and in the next hour and and a half another twenty-five are tempted by the lobworm bait and, as always, probably as many bites are missed. The fish run from six ounces to twelve ounces and it seems as if the bottom of the drain is paved in perch lying there fin by spine and starving hungry. The bigger fish must be present but the only bigger fish I see, or feel, is a pike that rips off a perch along with the end tackle as I am bringing a perch in to the net.

      Quite few of the perch that I catch have duelling scars that show skirmishes with bigger predators but the large perch that I know are there fail to show up, or perhaps they have been beaten to the worms by the shoals of foolish smaller and medium perch. Those bigger perch, well they'll turn up eventually when the weather gets a little bite to it and they get just a little hungrier.
      Saturday will soon be here and then I can chase the pike, or the big perch.