I’ll purposely start this series by being controversial and ask you to forget everything you’ve ever read about perch! Why? Because, a lot of it is totally wrong!
Many of those who write about perch actually have little practical experience of perch fishing. These authors are frequently all-rounders who perhaps have exploited a short-lived situation and caught some big perch from one or two particular waters. To fill the gaps in their knowledge they rightly copy what other writers have had to say, which with most other species works very well. Unfortunately, because there have been so few perch specialists over the years, the same erroneous information is copied down and put into print year after year, generation after generation. These mistakes are then repeated so often that they become accepted as facts! However, just because something’s in writing doesn’t make it right!
Please don’t think I’m knocking these writers, because I’m not. They’ve simply been given duff information. Likewise, don’t blindly accept everything I tell you either. Sure, use my experience as a perch specialist as a guide, but then add in your own ideas. For one thing is certain, the best and most successful anglers are those who think for themselves.
Hopefully this series will show you how you can consistently catch specimen perch. However, before we go any further let’s define what is meant by a specimen "stripey". This obviously varies from water to water, but on a national basis I’d rate any perch over 2½lbs as a specimen. Such a perch would be equivalent to for instance, a 2lb roach or a 20lb pike, and is within reach of nearly everyone wherever they live in the country.
However, once you’re talking about perch over 3½lb the situation is very different. In fact it’s interesting to note that few of even the top all round specialist anglers have caught fish of this calibre, and even then they’re usually accidents. Four pound perch really are the fish of a lifetime and very few genuine fours are caught each season. Quite a number are claimed and reported in the weeklies, but even the few that have photographic evidence to back them up are often suspect to say the least. In fact, the weights of perch are over-estimated far more than any other species. Indeed, I’ve been asked to witness almost a dozen so-called 4 pound perch. The biggest went just 2lbs 10ozs!
Obviously, the first step to a specimen perch is to find a suitable venue. However, here is an example of where I differ from the excepted wisdom as many books and articles will point you in the direction of a clear water. An equal number of books and articles would be totally wrong! The fact of the matter is that perch, like all fish, will grow biggest where they can obtain the maximum amount of food for the minimum amount of effort. This may well be in clear water, but could equally be at murky venues. For instance, Furnace Pond in Kent where the current record of 5lbs 9oz came from is far from clear!
Furnace is in fact very similar to the modern commercial carp fisheries except that it’s run on a syndicate basis. I had a chance to join the syndicate before it started producing monster perch but, not being interested in big bags of small carp, turned the offer down. Of course, once the news of the perch potential got out there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a place! Many waters of this type are coloured because they’re so full of fish that the bottom, which is often of clay, is continually being stirred up. Indeed, Furnace is such a "hungry" water that my wife and I have actually had the carp taking crisps out of our fingers!
Why then do these overstocked carp fisheries produce such big perch? Pete Garvan, one of the founders of the Perchfishers, has suggested that the roach and rudd etc in these waters are so crowded out by the carp that few ever get a chance to grow bigger than a few inches. This means that more or less the whole population of roach and rudd are small enough to be eaten by the perch, which can swallow fish up to almost half their own length. Well, I reckon that Pete is spot on.
What’s more, in their early years some of these commercial fisheries contain little or nothing in the way of spawning sites for the perch which, unlike roach and rudd, prefer twigs, or at the very least weeds, on which to lay their eggs. This means that they’re are very few perch and a huge amount of food, so its not surprising that commercial carp fisheries produce specimen stripies. In fact, at some of these waters it seems that the perch only have to open their mouths for their dinner to swim in! This can make these waters very difficult, but on the other hand the first angler to target the perch on these venues is on to virgin fishing of the highest calibre. I’ve already covered how to fish these waters in Angler’s Net in my article Big Perch from Commercial Carp Waters.
Unfortunately, many of these fisheries have restrictions that make it difficult to catch the perch. For instance livebaits or even freshwater deadbaits may be banned, and of course these are the perch’s staple diet on this sort of venue. (Incidentally, sea baits are next to useless for perch). However, there are so many of these fisheries springing up that there’s almost certain to be one near you that doesn’t have such a ban. And as the perch in these waters can easily grow up to ½lb per year they reach specimen size very quickly.
One word of advice though. If the rules don’t specifically outlaw live and deadbaits don’t ask permission to use them, as once the owner’s attention is drawn to the matter a ban almost always follows! Just be discreet, don’t bring in baits from outside and make hay whilst the sun shines.
Other restrictions can also be a problem including bans on the number of rods, groundbait, barbless hooks and, worst of all, having to be off the premises by sunset – very often the peak feeding time for perch, especially in winter. Sometimes a quiet word with the owner once he’s got to know and trust you can get round these problems.
For instance the owner of one of my local fisheries doesn’t stand any sort of nonsense but is a very sensible sort of chap. I explained that I used barbless hooks by choice for small baits such as maggot but that barbless hooks in the larger sizes could kill perch (which have their hearts near the back of their throats) by penetrating too deeply. I showed him the hooks I prefer – size 6 Ashima Super Maggots which have absolutely tiny barbs, and he agreed that both John Watson and I could use them but for perch only. He also allowed us to stay until it became too dark to see a float, and without this concession we wouldn’t have caught half the fish we did. If you are forced to use barbless hooks, put a small piece of float rubber or, better still, John Roberts Predator Bait Savers on the hook after baiting up. This will minimise damage to the perch and will also keep livebaits on
the hook.
Of course, commercial carp fisheries aren’t the only type of water that holds big perch. Certain rivers such as the Upper Great Ouse also contain massive stripies. This is probably because of the big (Signal) crayfish present that the perch and other species use as body building food. However, I do feel that commercial carp waters offer the average angler the best chance of breaking the record. They’re not all holes in the ground either. One such water with great potential, Retallack in Cornwall, is in the middle of a Western theme park and is as pretty as a picture. I’ll be looking at different types of venue in more detail later in the series. However, for the moment, let’s look at how you can track down a suitable water, whatever the type, for specimen perch.
1. Luckily, because perch are not a "cult" fish, anglers fishing for other species will freely reveal where they’ve caught big perch or seen others catch them. The secret is to talk to everyone you meet, whether it’s on the bank, in a tackle shop or wherever.
2. Phone or write (don’t forget a stamped addressed envelope) to club secretaries whose addresses you can get from you local Environment Agency office (see your telephone directory).
3. Quiz the Environment Agency fishery staff as well, as they sometimes come across big perch in their survey work.
4. Check both your local papers and the angling weeklies for reports of big perch. However, as already mentioned, be careful here as the weights of perch are often exaggerated, especially where prizes are involved.
5. Both the weeklies and some of the monthly magazines also contain details of day ticket waters and the fish you can expect to catch from them. Once again do take these with a pinch of salt as the information often comes from fishery owners – and they’re not exactly impartial!
6. Get hold of "The Book of the Perch" from your local library (unfortunately it’s now out of print). This gives full details of all perch over 4lbs reported to the angling press from 1900-1988 and is a mine of useful information. It also analyses the baits and the months that produced all perch over 3lbs. reported during this period. I’ll be returning to this later in the series.
An important point to remember is that perch populations often go in cycles. For instance a particular year class of perch grows big and a water gets a reputation for producing specimen perch. Then smaller perch begin to increase in number whilst the big perch die out, which often leads to an explosion of small stripies. The next step is for a very small proportion of the perch population to suddenly dramatically increase in weight (why I’ll again discuss later), and thus the cycle starts all over again.
However, I must stress that not all waters demonstrate this cyclic behaviour, and there’s not a fixed time between peaks as some have suggested. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at waters where big perch have been caught in the past as they often produce specimens again many years later. This is particularly so if they haven’t been fished for perch in the interim period as perch, like all predators, thrive on neglect.
The peak of the cycle usually lasts just a couple of years and so it’s important to work out where in the cycle a water happens to be. One local lake I’ve fished for the last few years demonstrates this point nicely. The first year I fished it, perch of any size were very scarce indeed. However, almost all the fish were over 2½lbs. Two years later the average size was even higher and my best from the water went 3lbs. 14 ozs. The following season the average plummeted and I recorded only one fish over 3lbs and that was only 1oz over. This season the biggest so far is only 2lbs 14ozs and I’m being "plagued" with perch in the 1½lb category. Nevertheless, nearly every 4 to 5 hour session is producing at least one two pounder. I shall probably move on at the end of this season but will definitely keep an eye on the water for a future recovery.
Having said that, I’m fishing another very hard venue at the moment, which contains very few fish of any species. So to have an easy perch water to test ideas out on is very helpful. Not only that, but when you’ve had 6 successive blanks on a heartbreak water you need somewhere easy to prove you can still catch fish!
