Covid blocked all the competitions in 2020 so most of them were moved to 2021. Same happened to Perchmania – the biggest perch competition in the UK. The new date was 12th and 13th of June 2021 – so as I expected it wasn’t perch that dominated the catches 😉
The rules are simple – a team consist of two anglers that need to catch at least 6 perch over two days of fishing and the overall score is the sum of top 6 perch lengths. Sounds simple but at Grafham it isn’t. It’s famous for big fish but it’s never easy to get numbers.
We started the first day fishing in a less crowder area but still in very good spots. Unfortunately they didn’t delivered. Only fish we caught was a big zander.
So we decided to move further to a smaller fish area. That was partially successful – we got one 37 cm perch and many zander. It was fun at the beginning but at some point we were annoyed with yet another zed. We didn’t think long and decided to join the crowd in the best places. I don’t like this but sometimes it’s the best choice during a competition. And it paid off – we caught 45 and 46 cm.
After these two fish we had no more strikes for hours. So at the end of the day we came back to our first spots and again it was a good decision. We quickly had 34, 45 and 48 cm. We were in such a hurry that we didn’t even take photos of the biggest perch 🙂
After day one we had 255 points and we were 4th. Not bad. Additionally we had just 2 small fish so the plan was simple – to catch two big ones the next day. Easy to say, difficult to do. Especially if fish are already spooked and there is no wind at all.
So we struggled at the beginning – 2 hours with no bite. Same decision as the day before – we join the crowd. Same result – contacts again. First Marcin got 46 cm, then … I hooked a decent perch and broke the line. WTF ? Fortunately the crankbait came up. I attached it again and soon landed a decent 47 cm perch.
A few minutes later I lost a fish again. I started to analyze what is wrong. The line looked ok but then I realized I switched the rod to a zander one. To strong for that perch braid. When I use a zander rod I set hooks hard. To hard in this case. An amateurish mistake that maybe costed us a lot. Fishing …
After I lost that fish we didn’t have more bites so we decided to go back again but this time it didn’t work. For a long time we were 1st then 2nd but the last hour was crazy and a few teams had a very good finish and we end up at 4th.
Still we’re happy with the result and to be honest the first 3 teams well deserved the podium – they caught more and bigger fish.
