CHAPTER XVII 

 FISHING FOR PERCH 



Preservation of perch Rod, reel, and line for perch Float and 

 paternoster tackle How and when to use it Stream fishing 

 for perch Artificial flies and baits. 



FISHING for perch used to be a very favourite sport of 

 mine in the old days, when a dish of them was very 

 nearly a certainty, because that old favourite river of 

 mine, the Mid Witham, had a fairly good sprinkling of 

 them in many of its reaches. I could generally depend on 

 a bag of from eight to fifteen fish, all over the half-pound 

 standard. That river lent itself to the well-being of the 

 perch nice little streamy runs, here and there deeper 

 curling eddies, plenty of submerged boughs, and above all, 

 tiny gudgeon were there in thousands ; and fresh-water 

 shrimps could be seen jerking themselves along the shallows 

 nearly everywhere. 



Of late years the perch seem to have got woefully thinned 

 down ; there was no system of protection in vogue that 

 was likely to be of lasting benefit, and, as I pointed out in 

 the last chapter, perch spawn was deposited in such places 

 and in such a manner that all sorts of aquatic enemies 

 could easily get at and destroy it. 



Within the last few years, however, the preservation 

 societies of various rivers, notably the Thames, have 

 turned their attention to this, and I am happy to say that 

 perch are most decidedly on the increase in that river at 

 any rate. Mr. A. E. Hobbs of Henley is one of the 



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