WHERE DO YOU GO TO MY LOVELY?

     I have some questions about Perch. The club water consists of two decent lakes which I shall refer to as the large one and the small one. For donkey's years the use of maggots on both was all but pointless. Up in the water or down, their use invariably resulted in the unwanted capture of an endless string of 2 to 4 oz Perch. If you are of a certain vintage yourself, you will know the sort; the ones that you used to gut hook as a small boy and which lit a fire that set you off on lifetime of enjoyment at the water's edge and burns ever more brightly with age.

      Two winters ago, out of the blue, the large lake began to produce lots of pound plus specimens and the occasional even bigger example. Bags of a dozen or more over a pound were not uncommon. In fact fish of that size were more common than small ones. Where did they come from? If they had grown on from those nuisance fish that were so common, why did we not have a spell catching lots of 8 to 12 oz ones? Why hadn't the Perch in the small lake done the same? They're only 15 metres apart and the water flows from the smaller one into the larger.



     I've made several attempts to catch them on the large lake this winter but they are nowhere to be found and other regulars I have spoken to have found the same. My last two, failed, 'Roach' sessions have been on the smaller lake and in two mornings I've had one just under the pound, two around a pound and a quarter and a two pound specimen. In the last 5 or 6 years, I've never seen a pound plus Perch from there. I don't even pretend to get it but the fact that fish can grow like that, under the radar, in heavily fished lakes is both a source of wonder and of hope that, even today, there is still some of that old mystery left, clinging on, in modern angling.

     It also makes me wonder about our syndicate pool. Three seasons ago it was not hard to catch sixty or seventy small Perch in a morning. Two seasons ago they had put on a couple of ounces; lots of them coming in at four to six. Last season we hardly caught any at all of any size. What are the chances then that next time they turn up we will be catching two pounders? Maybe this year? Maybe next? Maybe never?