240 THE PERCH 



this season. If perch are known to be plentiful 

 in a few hundred yards of the river, there are few 

 better ways of catching them at this season than by 

 drifting down in a boat, the float-tackle baited with 

 a gudgeon being twenty yards in advance. The bait 

 should be a foot or two from the bottom. The great 

 difficulty I have always found in this method of 

 fishing is to hook the perch. The fish seize the 

 gudgeon sometimes one way, sometimes another, but 

 almost invariably turn it and swallow it head fore- 

 most. As the unfortunate bait goes down the throat 

 of the perch, the hook is squeezed tightly against 

 its head, with the result that when the angler strikes 

 he more often than not pulls his hook into the head 

 of the gudgeon instead of into the perch. 



One day, after losing several perch in succession 

 from this cause, I tried the experiment of using a two- 

 hook Stewart tackle made up with rather large roach 

 hooks. I put the lowest hook in the mouth of the 

 gudgeon, and left the upper one free. This arrange- 

 ment I found answered very well, and, oddly enough, 

 the first fish I caught on it was a chub, which took the 

 bait boldly and almost immediately cut it clean in 

 half with its powerful throat teeth. 



In a river which contains both chub and perch 

 it often happens, when paternostering, that a bite is 



