earning my stripes

Sunday afternoon was my only chance to wet a line this weekend, but even then that wasn't looking likely, with recent rain I wasn't sure if any grayling rivers would be fishable or not and with limited time it wasn't worth taking the risk to travel to them, tide times didn't suit for a flounder trip either so it would have to be some local coarse fishing or nothing at all. I thought about having a walk along the canal with the lrf gear to try for some perch but speaking to Col on the phone he told me the canal was quite coloured and not worth bothering with. I had resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to get out and then I had one more idea, there's a quarry five minutes up the road which always has good clarity, and I knew it had some Perch in it too as Col caught one from there last year when we were fishing for Tench, why not i thought ,it was worth a try anyway.
Soon I was tackling up at the quarry and I have to say my first thoughts were ones of anger and annoyance at the amount of litter and crap left by the boozed up neds who seem to frequent places like this, the usual empty beer tins, old fishing line and camp fires strewn all over the place, what is it with these idiots when they think this is acceptable behaviour... rant over. Anyway I set up with a small jig head and a Lake Fork baby shad and started to cover the swim in front of me,  after a few casts I connected with what turned out to be a lovely wee Perch

soon after i took another smaller one but any visions of a bumper catch were short lived as it then went dead, after a while i decided to move to another spot which wasn't as easy as it sounds what with the steep banking's and dense undergrowth.

the next spot produced another nice Perch, this time on a Lemon Meringue Crappie Minnr!

another couple of moves around the quarry resulted in a couple of micro jack Pike, all welcome though on a day which i didn't promise much hope

there's one or two other venues in the area that could be worth a try for perch, ill keep them up my sleeve for when i'm stuck on a day like today.