This Perch doesn't count.

Saturday, on the Oxford canal with Barry trying for a Zander. It was very windy where we set out ready to fish into dark, we've had a few Zed's along this stretch and I was hoping for one for the challenge. I had half a pint of reds with me and put a maggot feeder out on one of the rods in the hope of attracting a Perch or two, drawing a few smaller fish into our swims should attract a few predators as well. Barry had three dropped takes and I had one plus a five ounce Roach on maggot so at least I had something to put on the list.

Tricky to weigh at this size.

Sunday, with rain forecast for the afternoon I headed out mid morning for a short session exploring a couple of new pools, I've heard a few fishy tales about the place and there's a few pictures on Google Earth which make the place look interesting so I thought I'd have a go just to see if anything lived in there and if it didn't work out the canal was nearby as back up. I was expecting the pools to be full of rubbish and shopping trolleys but was very surprised, it all looked very clean and tidy and both pools have seen angling activity. I wasn't sure what to expect and was armed with a deadbait rod as I've heard tales of Pike as well as the left over maggots from Saturday.

I concentrated my efforts on the smaller of the two pools as it looked the fishiest but was disappointed in the lack of depth, however, I was soon rewarded with a Perch on the maggot rod, when I say Perch it was more of a Perchlet or Perchling that barely pulled the scales round to two ounces,  it's so small that I'm not sure if I should count it in the challenge, I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I weighed it!

This Perch doesn't count!

I went on to catch another seven stripey's, all the same size, hoping that wading through the smaller fish would eventually catch me a bigger specimen and I thought I'd cracked it when I struck into something that gave a much better account for itself, I was convinced it was a good Perch until it reached the net, it was a Rudd.

A bit out of focus.

Twelve ounce bar of Gold.

It pulled the scales to twelve ounces which I was very pleased with, it's a shame that I ran out of maggots, I would have liked to have caught a few more of these.

I think this pool will be seeing a bit more of me this year.