The Perch-Hop Plan

A new river in search of perch and the plan was to leap-frog down the stretch lure fishing and when we had a hit or follow to concentrate on that area with lob worms and minnow livebaits. With three of us fishing this was a great way to cover a lot of water.

I opted for natural pattern small hard body plugs, not great for hooking up to perch but they love tapping and following them - I hoped they'd give up their hiding spots.


First follows were from a very rare Lea zander, in true zander fashion it was more than happy to follow my lure but didn't want to hit it - at one stage I was making it follow a figure of eight pattern off the rod tip before it got bored and skulked back to the depths.

It had been an early start and fishing in the rain, I really hoped we'd be rewarded with a perch or two but we didn't even spot one all day - really not having a lot of luck with them yet this season.


I did however manage a couple of jacks on the plugs - really nice to get pike from a new river, and somewhere I'd like to return for a double later in the season - and hopefully a few elusive perch.