Warwickshire Avon - Bleak Expectations

It was overcast but not ideal Perch conditions, the Avon is still proper gin clear however I found myself with a three hour window of fishing opportunity and jumped at the chance. Just a decent Perch would nice. I know a swim where there are bleak in huge numbers so with a pint of maggots I decided to catch a few and keep them in the landing net and fish three swims for Perch.

Bleak are an excellent live bait for Perch, they are an ideal size and suspending them under a 6g Pike float gives enough resistance to slow the super fast alburnus and gives the Perch a chance to catch its prey. The first swim is riddled with Jacks but I've caught decent Perch here in the past so only for this swim I fished some Drennan soft braid. The reeds provide cover for all manor of predators and within 10 minutes or so the float properly shot under, yeap a Jack, arrrrh

I'm not sure why some anglers struggle with unhooking Pike, take your time is the key, upside down and between ones legs. Tease open the mouth and it's a large cavity to remove the barbless hook. After the 3rd Jack I moved downstream to a swim with plenty of tree cover and it was in the shade. Before I fished the first swim I chopped up a few worms and threw in a handful of red maggots. Perch don't mess around so if they are in the swim they will quickly take a bait....

...so after half an hour and biteless I moved back to the bleak swim and caught another 3 or so and decided to fish a bit of slack water by some cover. I could still see the bottom on most of the swim so not ideal but with a bleak positioned and slowed in its tracks it didn't take long for the float to sail under, maybe I was premature with the strike but I could clearly see the large flanks of a fish and it swam back to the depths. Another bleak went out and positioned in the slack and sure enough within 30 seconds or so the float was being dragged towards the thick cover. This time I gave it a tad more time and I struck in to a half decent fish. I could see it was a Perch and nice one at that. 

An oz bigger than a recent capture, at 1lb 13oz, it was a lean fish that felt hollow, still plenty of belly to fill it will definitely go to be well over 2 in a few weeks I would say. A quick post this but with the Wife away on a girly weekend I've some whippersnappers to entertain.