Dan joined me for the last fishing of the year today and I’m pleased to say it was successful with us catching maybe twenty Perch between us. But what a contrast to yesterday’s Perch fishing. I started the day thinking I would just replicate the drop shot technique from the previous day but it was straight away evident that the water was much clearer after 24 hours and Dan quickly had me three to nil with a cast and retrieve method. The Perch weren’t in their normal hidey-holes. They seemed to be shoaled up in the centre of the canal. A faster retrieve was working so I opted for short paddle-tail with a large profile – the Reins Bubbling Shad. While this lure has a decent-sized profile, it remains very soft as the outline is achieved with lots of ribs, keeping the bulk down. I fished it with a Texas rig on a size 2 offset hook and a small locked off cone weight. The change from dropshot was quickly rewarded with my first Perch of the day.
We roamed the towpaths for a good few hours with the majority of the fish coming from the deeper parts of the canal. We also had a visit from a nice sized Pike that took a fancy to our Perch on a couple of occasions but we weren’t set up to be able to bother him – perhaps another day.
Later on I started to experiment with the super-soft Daiwa Tournament D-Tail in the Ayu colour. Again, another decent sized lure (by ultralight standards) but is soft enough to be engulfed by even small fish.
Great day. Great company. And a good result to end this years lure fishing. Let’s hope 2013 continues the trend. Tight lines everyone.