PERCH-FISHING 63 



THE PERCH (Perca fluviatilis) 



The perch is usually described as a bold biting fish, and so 

 he may be where he is not much fished for, or where perch 

 are over-plentiful and small, or when, like other fish, they 

 have a hungry day ; but if by the above 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 

 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, 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 proceedings of a 

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

 twelve or thirteen feet below. How they come up to it with 

 all sail set, their fins extended, their spines erect, as if they 

 meant to devour it without hesitation ! and how they pause 

 when they do come up to it, and swim gently round it, as if a 

 worm or a minnow were an article of vertu, which required 

 the nicest taste and consideration of a connoisseur to appreciate 





