

THE PERCH. 9l 



character it be meant that good perch are deficient in 

 wariness, then I contradict it. Where they are at all 

 fished and my remarks apply to rivers and lakes where 

 they are well and regularly fished for there are few fish 

 more capricious or careful in biting than large perch ; 

 small ones may often be taken in any quantity, but not 

 so when they gain experience. I have known places 

 haunted by numbers of good perch perch of from a 

 pound and a half to three pounds in weight and yet, 

 season after season, there are seldom more than one or two 

 of them caught, and these nearly always at the starvation 

 part of the year, i.e. after the heavy winter floods, when 

 the small fish are all driven up the brooks, and the perch 

 are driven into the few still eddies that exist. Here, 

 while the river is tearing down outside in a spate, from 

 one to two hundred, and sometimes more, perch will often 

 be congregated in a space of some ten or twenty square 

 yards, perhaps. After these fish have battled with the 

 frosts of winter, on short rations for weeks, what chance 

 has a minnow among such a host, or what chance even a 

 hundred minnows : No wonder, then, that you pull them 

 up two or three at a time, one for each minnow ; the 

 only wonder is that they do not, in their eagerness, 

 swallow the plummet of your paternoster in its descent, 

 by mistake. In truth and faith, January and February 

 are deadly months for poor Perchy. Cabined, cribbed, 

 confined in a black hole of an eddy, they are pulled out 

 not in braces, dozens, or even scores, but often to the 

 tune of hundreds. I have seen and helped to catch ten 

 dozen and over out of one hole, and have heard of twice 

 ten dozen being taken. But catch Master Perch on a fine 

 summer's day, in this way, if you can. Often have I, 

 through the crystal clear water, watched the proceeding* 

 of a dozen perch at the worm or a minnow on my hook, 

 some twelve or thirteen feet below. How they come up 



