After dropping my wife and daughter off this morning, as I drove back I was suddenly hit with a need to go fishing, as I only had a couple of hours free I decided to go after Perch on the River Yare in Brundall, Norfolk. First I needed to sort out some bait, thankfully we had experienced some heavy rain over night and sure enough, lifting up the old dog food bags I had laid out on one of the flower borders I found plenty of large lob worms, certainly enough for a couple of hours fishing and it took me less than 5 minutes to collect them, bargain. I always like to take some red maggots with me for lose feed so after packing the car with a few bits I set off for Brundall and stopped off at Lathams Fishing in Potter Heigham quickly to grab the maggots.

Parking up at the top of Church Lane in Brundall I had a 10 minute walk to the river which was made easier than usual as I had minimal gear with me, a match rod and spinning rod, both made up, a bucket containing a few bit of tackle and the bait and also a 30Plus Robo chair to sit on (read my review of the 30Plus Robo chair here) .

I chose a swim that I had been to a few weeks back when I was bream fishing, a friend and myself had fun catching bream and a good stamp of roach, when the smaller roach were returned direct to the river a couple of them were taken by perch right up against the near bank under our feet and after witnessing this I promised to myself I would return and here I was.

I started off by feeding a handful of red maggots a couple of feet out from the bank with the hope that not only would it attract the perch but would also attract small roach etc that in turn would hopefully attract the bigger perch. Hookbait was a lobworm with the end nipped off to allow the worms juices to flow and act as a further attractant, the hook was a size 10 tied direct to the 6 pound main line with a small insert waggler locked in place with 2 BB shot and the last BB shot a couple of inches above the hook to help get the worm down on the deck. I would normally fish a stick float on these larger rivers but as I was only fishing a couple of feet out from the bank I was out of the main flow and the insert waggler would easily cope. Perch don’t like much resistance so I always try to fish an insert waggler if the conditions allow.

First cast I took a 6oz perch which took a large lobworm, over the next hour I took a further 9 perch up to 0.5lb which took me up to high water slack when the bites started to tail off so I decided to try a spinner. First cast out I took a small perch on the but was unable to tempt any further fish over the next 10 minutes. By then the ebb had started to pick up so I returned to the waggler rod.

While I was spinning I still kept a trickle of red maggots going in to the swim which seemed to be doing the job as the next perch to come out which was about 0.5lb spat out a mouthful of maggots in to the landing net so they had definitely been feeding on the lose feed. After a 10 minute wait the float shot under and on the strike I knew instantly I was in to a better fish as it made a run for the overhanging bush to my left, after a fight that lasted about a minute or so I slid the landing net under a beautiful 1.5lb perch. After returning the fish back to her lair I decided to call it a morning and return home, happy that I had caught the fish I had set out for. I’m convinced there is bigger perch in the river so no doubt I’ll be back soon.