Specimen Perch Fishing – Part Three, Baits

The first point to remember is one I underlined in my first article in the series – like any fish, perch grow biggest where they can obtain the maximum amount of food for the minimum amount of effort. In fact, Nature sees to it that if any creature, including perch of course, expends more energy in capturing its food than it obtains from eating it, it will inevitably starve to death. This "energy trade-off" is something that all successful animals instinctively know, and the angler can use it to his advantage.

As the choice of food varies from water to water, so too will the top bait. However, on most waters perch will thrive best on fish. It’s only on waters with few baitfish that perch will live largely on other food. Even then, some of the perch at least will target fish almost exclusively. For instance, researchers have found that nearly all Windermere perch grow to a maximum length of only 180 mm (7"). However, there is a very small but distinct population of perch that grow very, very much bigger – to a maximum of 463mm (18"), or over 2 1/2x longer! Scale readings show that the early growth of these "mega" perch is identical to that of normal perch, but at a certain age, which varies from 1 to 8 and averages 4 years, growth sharply accelerates. Analysis of the stomach contents of these perch shows a very much higher proportion of fish than normal. The scientists reasoned that the surge in growth was due to a change to an almost exclusively fish diet. They pointed out that other studies had shown similar results on other waters.

Here then is evidence of the "double population" that a number of anglers have already written about. For instance, it’s well known that many small ponds contain a super abundance of small perch, each competing for what little invertebrate food there is. However, these ponds sometimes contain a mere handful of specimen perch, which have grown fat on a diet of their smaller brethren.

Having said all this, even on waters that are stuffed full of small fish there are times that a temporary abundance of a different food item will mean that perch will gorge themselves on it. And unless they’re pre-occupied with a particular food (which does in fact happen with fry), few perch are going to turn their noses up at a big easy to catch meal. Nevertheless, if my life depended on catching a perch I’d undoubtedly choose a fish as bait.

So much for theory – let’s now look at practice. Here we can turn to "The Book of the Perch" by The Perchfishers. It’s now out of print but you can order a copy from your local lending library. Thanks to a huge amount of research by my co-editor Peter Rogers, "The Book of the Perch" records all 3lb perch reported to the angling press from 1900-1988. The total sample size is over 1500 which is thus big enough to give meaningful results. The proportion of successful baits was as follows: Worms 32% Livebaits 26½% Maggots 17% Lures 9% Deadbaits 6% Others 9½% If you concluded from this data that worms are therefore the best perch bait you would in fact be wrong! We also have to consider how often any given bait is used and also by what type of angler.

For instance, maggots are far and away the most commonly used bait, yet fewer big perch are caught on maggots than on worms or livebaits. Granted there are a few waters where maggots are successful for specimen stripies, but these are few and far between. The problem with both maggots and casters is that almost any size fish of any species will eat them and so they’re simply not selective enough. However, they can be excellent at attracting small fish which in turn brings in the perch, especially if the maggots are flavoured.

In fact flavouring baits, especially maggots, can be very important. I’ve proved to myself conclusively that flavoured maggots consistently outfish non-flavoured maggots by a considerable margin. There’s no doubt that perch are attracted to spicy flavours and the colder the weather the hotter the spice they seem to prefer. I used to have great success with Garam Masala and, in very cold conditions, Madras Curry. Nowadays, I use Archie Braddock’s concoctions, my favourite being Xotic which is a powder. Last autumn I stumbled on Rod Hutchinson’s Savoury Sense Appeal which in mild weather had the perch (which hate resistance) actually backwinding the reel! I immediately sent this liquid flavour to Archie who had it analysed and improved upon it. Early field tests suggest that Perch Magic, as it is called, is dynamite, so watch this space!

The next most used bait on the list is worm in one form or another. Not surprisingly it scores very well for big perch. However, on one commercial carp water I fish regularly, worm is next to useless. Nevertheless worm is a perch bait par excellence and indeed on some waters is the best bait for big perch, particularly where pike are present. In fact my two biggest perch came on worm from a gravel pit stuffed with fry but where pike make fishbaits a non-starter. Even worms aren’t pike proof, and in fact I’m often tempted to enter a pike match at the venue and fish worm sink and draw. In fact, John Watson and I frequently caught more pike this way than the pike anglers! Very frustrating, but 16lb pike on 4lb line can be great fun!

Of all the various types of worms I’ve had the best results with lobs, whilst brandlings have been by far the least successful. Be careful as many suppliers will try and sell large brandlings as lobs, often under the trade name of "loblings". On some days I’ve used treble lobworm, whilst on others half a lob has been what the perch have wanted. In each case I always nip the end off the worm to increase the smell.Livebaits come very high on the list of successful perch baits and are of course used mainly by pike anglers, who outnumber perch enthusiasts by a considerable margin. Yet pike anglers catch relatively few specimen perch. The reason has little to do with bait size because, as I’ll discuss shortly, big perch regularly eat surprisingly big baits. No, the problem lies elsewhere and the culprits are undoubtedly wire traces. Perch absolutely hate the feel of wire as you can easily prove for yourself on a water that doesn’t contain pike. Put out two identical rigs except that one has a wire trace and the other doesn’t. I’ll guarantee that you’ll catch a whole lot more perch (and other non-toothy predators) on a nylon trace than on a wire one. The only wire that I’ve found that is any good for perch, and even this is nowhere as good as nylon, is "Wonder Wire", one of the first products I released during my time at Caliber Tackle.. This extremely soft and supple 49 strand wire has now been discontinued but you should be able to still find some in the shops.

I find that choice of livebait is less important than size, with gudgeon being my favourite. This is because if fished high in the water they constantly strive to reach the bottom, thus sending out lots of attractive vibrations. Yet despite their activity they seem to last almost forever. Unfortunately, gudgeon are present in very few of the waters I currently perch fish, and as I won’t bring in baits caught elsewhere for fear of spreading disease, I rarely get to use them. My least favourite livebaits are rudd, not because perch won’t eat them (they will) but because they can get your tackle in a devil of a tangle! This means that purely because of availability I tend to use more roach and perch than anything else.

One livebait I rarely use is the humble minnow despite it being recommended by writer after writer. The reason is that minnows are simply too small to be selective. Even just about the smallest of perch can swallow the largest of minnows without difficulty. If you carefully examine the mo
uth of a perch you’ll see that it’s hinged almost like a snake’s. In fact, a perch can easily cope with a bait of one third its own length. Indeed I once kept a 10" perch in my home aquarium that had no trouble swallowing a 5" gudgeon! I’ve also watched 3lb perch pursue ½lb roach, although I wasn’t in at the kill.

My favourite size of livebait is 5", although there are occasions such as when the perch are pre-occupied with fry that a smaller bait is to be preferred. I’ll often start a session with two different size livebaits yet it’s usually the bigger bait that accounts for the better perch. The only other times that I’d use a smaller livebait is when I’ve nothing larger or my standard size baits are being rejected. However, even 5" baits aren’t immune to the attentions of small perch, although generally speaking most of the perch that fall to baits of this size are 1lb plus. In fact I’m happy to go up to 6" livebaits and would go larger still except for the problem of timing the strike. The only ways to avoid this would be to use a double hook rig which I’m totally against as it can damage the perch. Alternatively the livebait could be hooked somewhere other than in the lips, which I’m not prepared to do on possible cruelty grounds. We all have our limits and this is mine.

I always strike a take more or less immediately, which goes a long way towards avoiding deep hooking, even though it doesn’t solve the problem altogether. The only time I’ll delay the strike, and then only very slightly, is when I’ve missed several successive takes, although frequently these will be from small fish. In fact, deep hooking is another reason for avoiding small livebaits, which increase the chances of damaging a big perch to an unacceptable degree.

With deadbaits I am prepared to put the hooks in the tail for instance, and this means that I can use bigger baits up to 8" or so. This may seem more like a pike size bait but even two pounders will take deadbaits of this size. In fact, when using deadbaits of even 4" I’m often plagued with multiple catches of carp and tench! Yes, I’ve even had a brace of 2lb tench on 4" deadbaits! I reckon that if carp anglers used deadbaits they could clean up on hard fished waters, particularly if they used seabaits such as whitebait, which carp seem to love.

However, perch (like zander I’m told) will very rarely take a static seabait. Indeed, I once fished with whitebait on one rod for three whole seasons on a perch water without success , although I caught large numbers of chub, carp and tench. Whether it’s because perch don’t like the taste of seabaits, or whether they’re not fresh enough I don’t know. However, I do know that seabaits are next to useless for perch. Even freshwater deadbaits have to be ultra fresh otherwise their success rate falls sharply.

If you turn back to the table you’ll see that deadbaits accounted for only 6% of the 3lb perch. Yet when you take into account how little they’re used, and then largely by pike anglers who these days tend to use seabaits for convenience, you’ll realise just how effective deadbaits are for specimen stripies. In fact some perch seem to be largely scavengers, and in overstocked commercial fisheries there must be a regular supply of suitable sized deadbaits. Indeed there’s one perch of 3lbs 13ozs I’ve hooked 3 times on deadbaits yet it’s never taken a livebait despite my fishing lives about twice as much as deads. The first time it spat the deadbait back at me just before I reached for the net! Having landed it the second time I’ve moved off this water but I wonder what it contains now?

This goes to show that there is no best bait even though a preference may be shown on a given water. When you begin a campaign at a venue you’ll have to experiment until a pattern emerges. Even then it’s important to be flexible, and I’d always advise starting a session using more than one bait. If you don’t you simply won’t know what you might have missed.