A bleak future.

 The title should have been Set a perch to catch a perch but it isn't. Read on to find out more..

Out on the Norfolk/Cambridgeshire borders today and whilst county hopping I used my lunch break for some down time. Lovely warm equinox day, but you've guessed it, that bastard wind again. With nothing much above 10 feet above sea level for miles and miles it can build up some venom and today it was a facer which meant I needed to put the whole 4 metre whip out to get some baits for my intended perchy quarry and being by a lock the usually negligible flow (unless the Middle Level Commissioners are pumping the Bejesus out of it, reeds going from vertical to horizontal in a nano-second so I'm told) was variable as  the day barges came up from the main drain.

Small perch procured and out it went under my new favourite Loafer on a 1/0 Aberdeen still caked in  my blood from Sunday. Lesson for today. Catch your bait, and some more first, especially if the wind is tricky. It's not like sedentary dead baiting. But I manage to scratch  a few out, more even tinier perch, a skimmer, some rudd  and  a new species for me, a couple of bleak. I've never caught one  in over 50 years of fishing.

Back to the perch doing it's thing. I bought it in closer whilst the first day barge went past and as the boils and vortices subsided the Loafer  disappeared down it's own vortex but without the hoped for audible plop. It was a perch alright, and  a humongous one. How big? No point speculating but the sight of it sinking away after it spat the mangled tiny perch back at me will stay with me for  a while. And spur me on. Time was ticking and one last swing out close again with the bleak and almost  instantaneously the Loafer (or is it a Chubber) simply disappeared  with no surface disturbance at all. One of those blink and it's gone moments. No stripes or vast spiky dorsals this time, just a handsome little pike that managed not to injure me.

I'll be back...