THE PERCH 



115 



fish form as it is possible to conceive. The dark stripes or 

 bars down each side of this fish number, I think, never more 

 than seven, although I have one here set up that has nine 

 down one side ; but I fancy this was only a lark of the pre- 

 server, who fancied he could improve on Nature. 



Perch spawn early, say by the latter end of April or the 

 beginning of May, and they choose peculiar positions for 

 this operation. They deposit their ova on the submerged 

 boughs, just under the surface of the water, and on the reed 

 weed and flag beds, and sometimes over the stones on the 

 shallows, spreading the ova all over everjthing handy, like 

 long festoons of lace. Swans, ducks, and other water-fowl 

 reap a merry harvest at this time, for nothing could be 

 handier for them than perch spawn, which they speedily 

 gobble up by the yard. Perch are wonderfully prolific, as 

 many as three quarters of a million of eggs have been cal- 

 culated to be in the ovum of a pound fish ; and so there 

 stands need to be, for perch spawn stands a very poor chance 

 of coming to maturity, in all probability not more than one 

 egg out of every thousand reaches the fish stage. This fish 

 in favourable and well preserved waters will reach a very 

 fair size, CKld ones have been taken that exceeded 41b. I 

 should say that four and a half pounds would be the very 

 outside weight of this fish in British waters. We have heard 

 of English perch reaching the extraordinary weis^ht of six, 

 eight, and even one of nine pounds, but there does not ap- 

 pear to be any evidence in existence that such can now be 

 seen preserved, so I am afraid we must take these gigantic 

 perch with a good deal of caution. A two pounder is a 

 good one, while as for a three pounder, they are not often 

 caught. I have seen them taken from various rivers when 

 they tipped the beam at from two to two and a half pounds, 

 and probably twice when they scaled nearly three pounds ; 

 but never yet have I landed one or seen one landed that 

 went over the three pounds. In some of the Scandinavian 

 lakes we hear of them reaching extraordinary dimensions, 

 and in the Danube there are some that go into the teens of 

 pounds. The perch is blessed, or perhaps he would call it 

 cursed with a very large mouth, and sometimes it is wonder- 

 ful the bait he will go for, he must regulate the size of his 



