116 DAYS AMONG THE PIKE AND PERCH 



about those that live in a good river, that are fat and well 

 fed, and have any amount of small fry and natural food 

 knocking about next door to them, as it were, and also 

 know the angler, his ways and his tackle, almost as well 

 as he knows himself. " These critical perch," I have heard 

 exasperated anglers say more than once, " they know the 

 shape of the hook, and even what shop the paternoster 

 was bought at." 



Well, I won't put them as being quite so knowing as that, 

 but a good river perch is a different thing from a pond one. 

 A boy with a bent pin, a thick gut line, a home-made 

 wooden float, and half an ounce of lead on his tackle, won't 

 get many of them, although he might get one or two by 

 accident during certain conditions of the water j but 

 during August, September, and October, when the rivers 

 have run down very clear and bright, and even the knots 

 on the gut line are visible deep down in the water, Mr. 

 Perch is a very wide-awake customer, and to get a dish of 

 them you have to be, as an old friend once put it, as " artful 

 as a wagon-load of monkeys." 



Use tackle as fine as you can, and use it in the Notting- 

 ham style fine and far off. During the early part of 

 the season, when they stray into the shallow runs to keep 

 company with, and forage with, the dace, etc., that is, 

 during the latter part of June and the beginning of July, 

 they are not quite so careful as they are a little later on. 

 Pcich are often caught then on the red worms and cad- 

 baits that you are swimming down the streams for dace ; 

 and frequently they annex the trout angler's artificial 

 minnow. They are picking up after spawning and cleaning, 

 and are empty and hungry ; but wait a bit, say six or 

 eight weeks later, when full up, in good condition and 

 fighting trim ; they leave those shallows and seek refuge in 

 deeper water, under the roots and hollows of an overhanging 

 bank, in the deeper, quieter eddies, round the woodwork 

 of an old bridge, in the runs by the side of flags and rushes, 

 and in those quiet eddies that flow by the side of a swirling 



