Early Bird

Now my local perch lake has woken up I’ve been wading through lots of small fish to try and pick up the better ones. I discovered from chatting to a guy who has been ‘guesting’ the same lake I have for 30 years that the lake has a large population of rudd so last week hatched a cunning plan – namely larger shads than my normal 2-3’’ and in a pattern imitating the rudd. Hoping the larger shad might persuade the larger fish they were worth a chase I duly purchased some 4’’Mikado Fish-hunters from Artur at Lure World (see 'Links') simply because of the patterns (I’d normally favour kopyto) I settled on a 3.5g 4/0 AGM (see 'Links')  ball jig head as it allowed the shad to have a lovely erratic body roll – a bit like crank baits that sometimes roll out. I get everything from a regular body roll to dying minnow like action depending on speed.
Normally I have Wednesdays off but volunteered to go in for a few hours today so decided to get up at 5am and grab a few hours before work. The larger shad didn’t put the small fish off as they constantly tried to grab the lure. Far fewer actually hooked up so I settled into a routine of just ignoring the tail nips and retrieving at a fairly steady pace. Eventually I was rewarded with this lump – none of the high speed head shakes of the small fish– it felt like I had swum the shad into a snag as everything went solid. I am always amazed how differently the bigger fish fight and had my heart in my mouth as this fish pulled hard for the bottom and had the Sakura Shinjin rod hooped over. Have you noticed how slowly time passes when you know you have a good one on and just want it in the net?  Worth getting up early for this one!