From the publisher
In 1911, the third edition of the famous book by L.P. Sabaneev “Fishes of Russia” was published, on the basis of which the book “Original Russian Fishing” that we bring to your attention was prepared.
In terms of clarity, completeness and fascinating presentation, the book of the Russian scientist L.P. Sabaneev to this day has no equal in both domestic and foreign literature devoted to issues of fish life and methods of amateur fishing. Maximum simplicity and accessibility made it interesting to the widest readership.
When preparing the publication, we tried to completely preserve the writing style of L.P. Sabaneev. The book also preserves all the methods of amateur fishing he recommended, with the exception of those fishing methods that are now classified as exterminatory or poaching methods. In a few cases, expressions and details that are outdated today are also omitted, which are unlikely to be important or interesting to a modern fisherman.
Readers will find a detailed description of the most common fish species in our rivers and lakes, their habits and habits, a variety of information about the most effective methods of fishing, reliable recommendations for choosing fishing gear, and many techniques for catching fish that have been lost to date.
The publication will undoubtedly become a great gift and an indispensable assistant for all fishing enthusiasts, and will provide great practical assistance to both experienced and novice anglers. The book will especially appeal to those people for whom fishing is not just a hobby, but a state of mind.
We ask our readers to comply with fishing rules in accordance with the law.
Top 5 books about fishing for beginners
Contrary to the opinion of many that every man can fish, and there is nothing difficult about it, fishing is, first of all, a science with its own subtleties and complexities. Therefore, for a successful start in this matter, it is recommended to study the necessary literature in order to become a competent person in this field. In the modern era, access to information and learning is easier than ever. It can be difficult to distinguish a quality manual from advertised water. That's why we've prepared a list of the most informative books about fishing.
Melnikov Ilya and Sidorov Sergey “Fishing Bible”
The title of the book speaks for itself. It contains only useful advice. All the subtleties of fishing techniques, all about fish and bait. The author will introduce the reader to the features of popular bodies of water and also give answers to the most popular questions. The big plus is that even the most experienced fisherman will find many unique tips for himself.
Goryainov Alexey “How to catch a big fish?”
Probably every man dreamed of a huge catch to surprise all his loved ones and, of course, to amuse his own ego. The author is a famous fisherman with extensive experience behind him. Throughout his career, he has mastered many fishing techniques. This book allows you to master the most unexpected, but most importantly, effective methods of catching large fish.
Read: Fish communicate using sounds
Sabaneev Leonid “Life and catching freshwater fish”
The author of this book is famous for the form of his presentation. Sabaneev writes about fishing in such a way that even skeptics run for fishing rods. This book is truly invaluable for beginners, as it includes descriptions of the most popular fishing methods. What gear to choose? How to get fish? The book will answer all questions and tell you about the life of fish, its habits, where it lives, and what it eats.
Goryainov Alexey “Across the globe with a fishing rod”
Goryainov A. visited many countries and cities with a fishing rod behind him. All about the travels of fishermen from the Caribbean islands to Africa. All methods of catching fish from reservoirs around the planet are collected in one book. Intriguing stories and tips for fishing in all corners of the planet. Unknown routes, fishing safaris, and ways to survive in foreign countries.
Shcherbakov brothers “Modern spinning”
The modern world practically cannot do without spinning. Therefore, every angler should be familiar with its technique and structure. Much attention is paid to fishing techniques in the book. The author shares the special subtleties and secrets of spinning fishing. This book is a reference book that a good fisherman cannot do without.
Read: An unusual way of fishing in China
You need to take fishing seriously if you want to achieve some goals. Books have always been the best way to master information.
Part one
Perch Perca fluviatilis L
This well-known fish, together with roach, belongs to the most numerous inhabitants of our fresh waters: everywhere - in rivers and streams, lakes, even stagnant ponds with fairly fresh water - perch is found in abundance (Fig. 1). Some lakes are even inhabited by this one fish. Lakes with clear water are the favorite habitat of perch, and they reproduce best in them.
In its appearance and body color, perch is easily distinguished from all our other fish. Its body is quite wide, especially in large perches, and somewhat humpbacked; the back is dark green, the sides are greenish-yellow, the belly is yellowish; 5–9 transverse dark stripes stretch across the entire body, which make it very variegated; in some cases, these stripes are replaced by dark, irregular spots. In addition, the caudal fin, especially in its lower part, the anus and ventral fins are bright red; The pectoral fins are yellow, the first dorsal fin is gray, with a large black spot at the end, the second is greenish-yellow. The eyes are orange. However, the color of a perch depends, like most fish, on the quality of the water, and even more so on the color of the soil... Therefore, perches in clear water with a light sandy or clay bottom are very light, sometimes even without a black eye on the dorsal feather and with inconspicuous transverse stripes. On the contrary, in forest lakes with a black muddy bottom they have darker stripes, a darker back and a bright yellow belly. In some areas (as, for example, in Lake Senezhskoe, Moscow province) perches even have golden gill covers. In addition, it should be noted that young perches up to two years of age are more uniform in color than those that have reached sexual maturity and that the largest ones are comparatively darker. On the gill covers there is one sharp spine, which pricks very painfully and can even cause swelling and mild inflammation. The mouth is very large and armed with numerous, but very small teeth.
The usual size of perch does not exceed 0.8–1.2 kg. In very rare cases, it reaches 2–2.8 kg in our country, and only in large lakes, for example Onega, do you come across 3.2-kilogram and in Chudskoye even 4.3-kilogram perches. But in the rivers and lakes of Western Siberia, such giants are no longer a very big curiosity, and in the lakes of the Yekaterinburg district there are currently huge perches weighing 4–5 kg. However, large perches are not at all as large as one would expect, which depends on the fact that they grow in thickness and height rather than in length. They are almost never more than 54 cm, but their thickness in the back sometimes extends up to 16 cm, and their height up to 26 cm.
Rice. 1. Perch
Depending on the size, as well as the time of year, the perch stays in more or less deep places in the river or lake. In the summer, small and medium-sized ones choose as their habitat creeks, chickens, overgrown with aquatic plants (burdock, pea - Potamogeton, reeds and reeds), which also serve as an ambush for them when catching small fish, and generally stay at great depths, but in the fall they come out to more open places . Large perches constantly live at depth - in pools, holes - and come out from there only in the mornings and evenings. In the warm season, perches are usually seen in small schools, several dozen, rarely hundreds of pieces, and then small, one-year-olds, but in the spring, before spawning and especially at the end of autumn, they gather in huge schools, which consist of fish of the same age and are the same more numerous than they are smaller, so that the largest schools occur in the fall and consist of fingerlings and one and a half year old perches. Judging by the fact that they are caught in large numbers almost all winter with seines and fishing rods, it must be assumed that these flocks are divided into smaller ones only in early spring. In general, perch is a sedentary fish, never travels long distances, even before spawning, and often, as, for example, in ponds and lakes, lives all year round in the same place.
Large perch is a very agile, strong and predatory fish. One must be amazed at the greed and tenacity with which he pursues some fish that he has recaptured from the village. The unfortunate fish jumps out of the water like crazy, and the perch circles behind it, opening its huge mouth with a loud slurping sound until it grabs it. The chomping sound of a large perch is so loud that in calm weather you can hear it a hundred paces away. Small perches are not inferior to large ones in their agility and agility of movements. Who hasn’t seen how schools of perch hunt for fry, that is, the young of other fish; it even happens that, carried away by the pursuit, they run aground after their prey, even onto the coastal sand. Perches swim very quickly, but in jerks, often stopping suddenly and then rushing forward again. The perch does not allow any living creature to escape, from small aquatic insects to fairly large fish, as long as it is within its strength and can fit in its wide mouth. It itself is relatively rarely eaten by other predatory fish, which do not like its sharp dorsal spines. The main food of perch is small fish, also caviar; large perch loves crayfish and during the molting of the latter it stays near stones, snags, under the shore - in a word, near crayfish holes. Small crustaceans from the genus amphipods (Gammarus) and other relatives, found in many lakes in northern and part of central Russia, also constitute a very tasty food for this fish. In the Trans-Ural lakes, the so-called mormysh, apparently, is the main food of perches from October to December and in February - March. This explains why in lakes abounding in jigs, perch grows extremely quickly and reaches enormous sizes.
The spawning of perch depends on the time of the final opening of the waters: in ponds and lakes it never “rubs” the previously complete disappearance of ice, and only in the lower reaches of large rivers flowing to the south does it finish spawning before the water begins to arrive and the ice flows from the upper reaches. In Central Russia, river perch usually spawns when the water subsides, primarily in small rivers. In semi-flowing ponds, that is, those that flow only in the spring and after heavy rains, spawning begins several days later than in rivers, and in stagnant lakes it slows down even more. Thus, in the same area, the difference in spawning time can be more than a week, sometimes ten days. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that each breed of fish does not spawn before the water reaches a certain temperature at which the development of eggs of one or another breed becomes possible. Perch apparently spawns when the water reaches +7 or +8°C. In general, here, near Moscow, the beginning of perch spawning in rivers and rivers coincides with the beginning of birch tree blossoming, and the latest spawning occurs in early May, when the leaves have already fully unfurled. Before perch, many other fish spawn - dace, pike, ide and sheresper; only in the lower reaches of the Volga, according to Yakovlev's observations, perch spawns earlier than all other fish - in March, immediately after the mouths are opened from ice.
Schools of perch leave their winter camps - pits - as soon as small edges are formed, that is, at the first arrival of water, they break up into smaller camps and approach the shores. Often, from large rivers or lakes of the village, these enter tributaries that have been cleared of ice, walk for some time along the floods of these rivers, chasing small fish here and eating the eggs of dace, pike and ide, never, however, going far upstream. Such flocks usually spawn here and return back to the river when it has already entered the banks. Most of the perches in large rivers spawn, however, in oxbow lakes and flood lakes, where the flood drives them; when the waters quickly recede, they sometimes remain here until the next spring or a major flood. In rivers, spring camps of perch are always much smaller in number than in large flowing ponds or lakes, especially those where perch is almost the main species of fish.
Spawning in rivers almost always takes place in places that have no current or only a weak one, certainly in places where perches can find objects that they can rub against and thus contribute to the rapid flow of eggs and milt. These items vary depending on the nature of the area. In ponds and lakes, perches rub in old, broken reeds and reeds, in shallow places, and, in the absence of the above-mentioned plants, on the remaining stems and roots of burdock (water lilies); in rivers, eggs are spawned in creeks or bays, also on the stems of aquatic plants or on driftwood, various rubbish, on the roots of trees washed away by water, sometimes on the branches of flooded bushes; in large rivers, perch spends mostly in oxbow lakes and flood lakes, also in grasses. Only in northern and northwestern lakes (partly rivers) with rocky beds does perch spawn on stones and sometimes on sand. It has been noticed that large perches always rub in deeper places than small ones, and most willingly drop their eggs on old sunken stems of aquatic plants. During spawning, for the same reasons, perches go well into muzzles and tops woven from willow twigs, and they can easily be attracted to any place by placing several pine trees or fir trees there.
Like most fish, perch become more vibrantly colored shortly before spawning. The proximity of this time can always be determined several days or weeks in advance by the redder fins and sharply prominent stripes on the back. Perches with mature reproductive products are therefore very different from young perches from last year and third year, which are always paler and almost the same color. In most cases, these perches follow the schools of spawning fish in masses and diligently eat the eggs they have spawned.
The spawning itself takes place relatively more calmly than, for example, with roach, dace, bream and some other carp fish, which spawn in large herds. The spawning of large perches is not even noticeable, partly because their schools are small, partly because they rub at greater depths than small ones - between deep-seated reeds or (in some lakes) between stones. But small perch, at least in the so-called perch lakes, spawning in large runes (which are joined by even larger schools of juvenile perch) and in shallow water, often jump out of the water, and sometimes even gather in lake bays in such numbers that the upper rows , protruding outward at the bottom, produce a strong splash, audible and visible from afar. The best indicator of spawning grounds and a large concentration of fish in general is, as almost always, the presence of gulls, loons and other water birds.
Perch spawns exclusively early in the morning, sometimes shortly before sunset; in the midday heat and in the evening the game weakens significantly, the school thins out for a while, and at night the agitated fish completely calms down. Each fleece mostly finishes spawning in two or three stages, i.e. in the morning and evening or two in the morning and evening, but the game of perch of all ages continues for a very significant time - about a week.
Having spawned, schools of hungry perches first wander near the shore at shallow depths and feed mainly on the eggs of other fish, especially roach eggs, which spawn shortly after the perch, as well as earthworms brought into the river or pond from arable lands and vegetable gardens. Then, here in central Russia, around the second third of May, the perch breaks up into small flocks, and each village chooses a well-known area, which, with rare exceptions, it does not leave all summer, i.e., it leads an almost sedentary lifestyle. The number of summer schools also depends on the age of the fish and the area; Thus, the largest perches are found at this time even alone, rarely more than a dozen together; small perches move in dozens, and sometimes, as in some lakes and in the Lower Volga ilmens, in hundreds. The summer habitat of perch also depends a lot on the area and is quite varied, but in general we can say that perch in summer, with rare exceptions, stays at medium depth, in a small current and only where it can find some kind of protection or, rather, an ambush. Large perches always choose deeper and stronger places. One can almost take it as a rule that in stagnant or semi-flowing waters, perches stand in deeper-growing reeds and in other aquatic plants, mainly burdocks and powder grass (Potamogeton), closer to the edges of the growth, not far from clean places. In rivers they also choose grassy pools, oxbow lakes, and in the absence of them they stay in weak currents near stones or in snags and wells, and finally, in ravines and mill whirlpools with a whirlpool. In small rivers, schools of perches are found only in barrels (i.e., wider, deeper and slower-flowing places) and usually stand here not far from the riffles, waiting for prey - worms, some insects brought by the current, and small fish. In addition, perches everywhere like to stay near swimming pools, piles, bridges and piles of brushwood.
Everywhere and always, perch, like pike, leads a completely diurnal lifestyle and from dusk until full dawn, that is, shortly after sunset and shortly before sunrise, stands motionless in its shelter in a half-asleep state and does not take food at this time. Only at the end of May and at the beginning of June does it wander all night, but only in more northern areas. Perches go out to prey early in the morning, and, carried away by the pursuit, the fish often scatter in different directions and quite far from the camp. On a hot sunny day, they gather again and stand in shady places, in thick grass, under burdocks, overhanging trees, or under the very bank, if it is quite steep, until the heat subsides, and they no longer hunt, but only lie in wait for prey. from their ambushes. The perch swims and stands mostly close to the bottom, although not at the very bottom, like, for example, ruff, burbot, char, at a distance of 5–18 cm, but at times it rises higher - half-water and even to the very surface. In general, we can say that the higher the schools of fish rise, the smaller the schools of perch move. This explains why perches, despite the fact that they do not like warm water, stick to the upper layers around noon. However, in the middle of summer, in the most intense heat, in stagnant ponds and lakes, perches move to the springs or to the depths, hide under the floats, in flowing ones they go out into the riverbed and sometimes rise up the river, reaching the next dam. Apparently, in addition to warm water, they are encouraged to this movement by parasites that greatly bother them. As for purely river perch, its summer migrations depend mainly on the lack of food in the previous places and are mostly temporary, as well as the reason for this shortage is a large surplus of water. With each flood, the resulting turbidity and strong current drive small things into backwaters, bays, or into the mouths of small tributaries, where, of course, the water is cleared faster and (since it is dammed) has a weaker current. The perch follows the small fish and, together with it, rolls back into the river, taking its original places. In the lower reaches of large rivers, the flow of water can be caused by a strong downstream wind, but its consequences are the same: all the young fish, huddling near the very banks and in shallow places, go to flood when the “marine” approaches, and after them the perches move off. When the water decreases, they, following the fry, begin to roll back into the river bed along with the water, which is why they never dry out on the shallows, as happens with many carp fish.
The main food of perch is, of course, small fish - juveniles or the smallest species; Larger fish (7-10 cm) are caught only by the largest perches, and then relatively rarely, since they are too agile for these relatively clumsy predators. But the perch does not allow anything living to escape and in some areas at times even feeds exclusively on worms in the spring, and in the summer on molting crayfish or young crustaceans; in late autumn, at the beginning and end of winter, the main food of perches in many lakes in northern, part of central Russia and Siberia are small species of crustaceans, amphipods or jigs (Gammarus). Actually, this fish eats insects only when there is a lack of other food. Of the small fish, perch always pursues the species that is most common and easiest to reach. Those fish that constantly live in thickets of aquatic plants, where pursuit of them is almost impossible, become its prey only at a very young age, and perch prefers to hunt small fish of those species that like to stay in cleaner places, but close to thickets of aquatic plants, serving as an ambush for him. Almost everywhere in the rivers, perch mainly feeds on last year’s roach and fry of this most common fish, and only in the south of Russia does it seem to prefer carp fry to it (near the end of summer and autumn). In the ponds and lakes of central Russia, small and medium-sized perch undoubtedly prefer adult redfish (Leucaspius delineatus) to small roach, which here is sometimes very numerous and represents easier prey, since it always stays in the upper layers of water in even more open places than a one-year-old, already quite nimble roach. In more northern lakes, the place of the verkhovka is replaced by smelt; large perches living at great depths feed here on young whitefish and one-year-old whitefish. Finally, in small rivers, generally with a lack of small roach, perch hunts mainly for small minnows, loaches, and partly (in central and northern Russia) minnows. The easiest thing for him to get is loaches, which he diligently looks for in the stones, in the same place where he finds young crustaceans. It goes without saying that he does not spare his own offspring everywhere, and a large perch will also never miss an opportunity to grab a 9-12-centimeter fellow. The perch is so greedy and relatively stupid and careless, so little afraid of noise, with the exception of large specimens, that it can be caught, at least for ten months of the year, almost without interruption. The only difference will be in the number of those caught.
Almost simultaneously with the emergence of perch fry from the grasses, schools of adult perch, in turn, leave their summer camps and go out into more open and usually deeper places in the river, pond or lake. These flocks gather by age into herds, which continue to increase throughout the fall, almost until the waters freeze. These changes in the lifestyle of the perch are determined by corresponding changes in the lifestyle of fry of carp fish, which serve as its almost exclusive autumn food. Since the end of August, perches relentlessly follow the small things that have gathered in clouds, pick up stragglers and stray fish and, from time to time, bursting into the school, causing terrible devastation in it. They no longer hunt from ambush, as in the summer, but attack openly, they have plenty of food, and they get it even easier than in the summer. And since the location of the fry in the fall depends even more on the water level and wind direction (in lakes especially), this circumstance must always be kept in mind when looking for perch. During floods, as mentioned above, the little one clings to the banks or enters tributaries; in a strong wind it usually goes either to the leeward side or deeper. In addition, most of the fall, gulls and loons serve as good indicators of the location of fry and, therefore, perch, which in turn chase small fish, sometimes being content with fry, crushed by perches or regurgitated by them. With rare exceptions, perch stays close to the bottom in the fall, rising to mid-water only in very warm and clear weather. After the first strong mornings, it ceases to be thrown out of the water, of course, because all the fish, especially the fry, from now on stay in the lower, warmer layers.
For the same reason, flocks of perches, following herds of fry, with the onset of cold weather, at the end of autumn, little by little move to deeper places, or rather, into holes, and come out from there less and less often. At the end of October and beginning of November in the middle zone, the perch is already in winter camps and changes them only if it is disturbed by something. The locations of these camps are unchanged, and their main conditions are to deepen the bottom with possibly strong, sandy, rocky or clayey soil and good water; in addition, the larger the perches, the deeper and usually the farther from the shore they become. Then, depending on the nature of the waters, the camps have many features. It can, however, be taken almost as a rule that in spring or semi-flowing ponds, as well as in closed lakes, perches spend the winter either in the deepest and cleanest places, or lie close to springs. The same is observed in flowing ponds and lakes; here perch often winters in the upper reaches of the pond, in the so-called pipe, or even in the pond itself, but in the river bed, at the mouths of lake tributaries. In the large deep lakes of northern and northwestern Russia, perches prefer, however, to winter in rocks (on ludas, nals), as well as in some deep and rocky rivers, but not otherwise, however, than on a small current. In rivers, perches almost always spend the winter in pools. Finally, on the Volga, Oka and some of their tributaries, schools of perch, apparently, mostly stand under steep banks or bank ledges, often also at river mouths. In the lower reaches of the Volga, however, they prefer clean and deep eriks to the main channel, where they lie in the deepest places, usually where the erik is divided into two branches.
During the first third of winter, perches are still quite energetically pursuing schools of fry, which very often occupy the shallows adjacent to the pits, and in places in the north - numerous amphipods, not afraid of the cold and sometimes completely dotting the inner surface of the ice. But the strength and speed of movement of these fish, like almost all others, decreases significantly after the waters freeze, and they become more and more sluggish. With the formation of a thick layer of ice in the middle of winter, perches, apparently, do not leave their camps and lie here on the bottom, almost motionless, in close rows, in several layers, and take almost no food. With the first thaws here in the middle provinces in February, they little by little begin to emerge from their half-asleep state and begin to feed again. At the end of winter, the main food of perches in most lakes in northern and part of central Russia is the amphipods mentioned above (mormysh in the Perm province, humpbacks in Western Siberia), which at this time reproduce and are usually found in pairs. Then, with the formation of edges and large polynyas, schools of perch leave their winter camps, break up into smaller herds and soon begin spawning.
Perch has many enemies, and if it is found in large numbers almost everywhere, it is only due to its unpretentiousness and strong reproduction. All predators - catfish, pike, pike perch, burbot - do not disdain it, in some places catfish and pike almost prefer this fish to others, large perches eat small ones. Waterbirds and osprey are also doing quite a bit of perch fishing. Its eggs are destroyed by other fish, especially char (in the north and stickleback), and water birds; they often die from lack of wind, as mentioned above, or, on the contrary, from strong winds that throw them ashore. Often the perch becomes a victim of its own greed: it happens that the captured fish slips into the side gill slit, in which it gets stuck and dies along with the predator; It also happens that a perch attacks a stickleback and it mortally wounds it with its erect dorsal spines. Quite often he is attacked by parasites, especially in stagnant waters: tapeworms are often found in his intestines, and a special type of parasitic crustacean, the so-called perch eater (Aechteres percarum), lives in his mouth. In ponds and lakes, although not all, a huge number of perch die in winter from lack of air. The so-called spirit - the spiracle of harmful gases - acts on them earlier than on pike, ruffe and roach, that is, they fall asleep before these fish.
Rice. 2. Perch eater – female and male (enlarged)
With this last exception, most perches die as prey to humans. But, despite their abundance, they do not have such commercial importance as, for example, the even more numerous Caspian herring and ram and the more valuable and larger bream, carp and pike perch. Perch and pike are perhaps the only fish that are almost universally caught in larger numbers by anglers than by real fishermen.
* * *
Fishing for perches is the easiest and most tempting in terms of catchability, and therefore there are a lot of fans of this fishing, especially among beginners and inexperienced fishermen. Perch takes more or less greedily almost all year round, with the exception of the middle of winter, and even then not everywhere; Its bite is very reliable and it rarely breaks and is mostly due to the fault of the fisherman. The perch “bites” boldly, immediately grabs the bait with its large mouth and immediately drags it, swallowing it as it goes. The little one, however, sometimes fiddles with it if it is large or if he is full. The bait is usually either an earthworm or a small fish, less often a molting crayfish, crayfish necks and small river crustaceans (mainly in summer), and even less often, in some places, the so-called mormysh (in winter). In addition, in autumn and winter, a large number of perches are caught using artificial metal fish - spoons. Other baits, such as eels (the larva of the cockchafer), bloodworms (the red larva of the green water mosquito), other insect larvae, and especially insects themselves, are rarely used, and the perch never takes bread or grains.
Bait and bait for perch are required very rarely, only in the summer, when the bite is bad, and even then they achieve little of their goal. They feed it most often with worms, less often with slugs or (in the current) raw bones with the remains of meat. Abroad (in England) a very ingenious method is used to attract perches to the desired place, namely: they lower a large wide-necked bottle or a white glass jar with small fish there, after having previously tied the hole with some very rare material. Some German authors of works on fishing believe that camphor, camphor oil and some other odorous substances attract perches to a certain place, and it may very well be that they are right, since there is no doubt that all fish, when searching for prey, are guided mainly by smell, then touch and sight. The Germans consider the best bait composition for perch to be an ointment made from camphor, goose fat and fat rendered from heron (gray), which undoubtedly has a special appeal to all fish, as well as camphor with honey. Worms, crayfish necks, frog legs, etc. are placed in these compositions for some time (at night), and then they are thrown where needed, like bait or groundbait.
There is no need for particularly strong and thick fishing lines, and a fishing line of 6 and no more than 9 hairs or a silk thinner than an ordinary pin is completely sufficient. Only when fishing with girders, lures and tracks, when there is generally a greater likelihood that a pike will take a perch instead, is a thicker line, sometimes even twine, needed, and with a thin basque leash. Hooks, single, medium-sized (from No. 1 to No. 4), are tied either directly to the fishing line, or on leashes made of so-called buffalo hair or thin basque. Double, let alone triple, anchor hooks are used relatively rarely, but it is very useful sometimes (if the bite is good) to tie a so-called bloodworm hook with a long rod onto the leash, which cannot be swallowed deeply.
The methods of fishing for perch are quite varied. It is caught on a long (2.8–4.2 m) solid or composite (three-column, rarely four-column) fishing rod with and without a float, on a short line, on short 1–1.4 m fishing rods with a long line, without a float ( i.e. bottom fishing rod, or cast fishing), on the so-called filly, or block, with a short fishing line without a float - on the weight, finally, on a spoon, on a track, occasionally on girders, on allowances and nets. Let's take a closer look at each of these fishing methods. Where, at what time of year and day you should look for perch, has already been described above.
Fishing with a float
used in places with a weak current or no current at all - in ponds and lakes, in river backwaters, whirlpools and barrels, mostly from the shore, swimming pools, bridges, and on lakes, more often from a boat. The float (cork or sedge bark) must match the nozzle, i.e. the smaller the nozzle, the lighter it should be; At 12–16 cm from the hook, a sinker is attached to the fishing line (or leash) - one or several large pellets or one buckshot, so that the float stands vertically and most (two thirds) of it is under water. The bait is a whole worm, put on from the head, with a more or less long tail, a crayfish neck (in both cases, the bait should lie on the bottom or hang 4.5–9 cm from it) or a small fish, usually a small raft (in 4. 5–7 cm), even more often verkhovka, occasionally crucian carp. The fish sinks 12–26 cm from the bottom and is hooked onto the back under the dorsal fin. When biting greedily, when the perch takes not only the already asleep fish, but even pieces of fish, it is more profitable to bait the little one like a worm, sticking the hook in front of the dorsal fin or on the side of it and passing the sting behind the skull. The main thing is that the fish has the correct, horizontal position on the hook, and therefore, where there is no or almost no current, there is no point in hooking the fish by the lip or under the gills, as when fishing in the current. When biting, a small perch first shakes the float and then dips it (probably this is where its name comes from); the big one often drowns him right away. The moment the float disappears is the most convenient for hooking, since if you are late, the perch deeply swallows the bait and the hook has to be either pulled out of the stomach or unhooked with a special piece of iron or a copper knitting needle ending in a fork. You shouldn’t hook too much, since the perch’s lips are quite weak (for the same reason, the tip of the rod should be quite flexible) and you can tear them off; large perch, in addition, when strongly hooked, often breaks the line, and it is more prudent to let it walk on the fishing rod for a while and drag it only when it gets tired and swims to the surface; then it is caught with a net, and in the absence of a net, it is taken by hand (from a boat) or dragged to the shore, away from the water. Large perch is a fairly strong fish; He is especially stubborn when turning, but he gets tired relatively quickly. Very often, after hooking, he rushes into the bank, into the grass or under the boat and tangles the fishing line. Since the perch takes correctly and does not break away, it is mostly caught with two or three fishing rods; they are stuck into the shore, with a peg with a fork in front for support, and when fishing from a boat, the fishing rods are placed across it. They can only catch with one fishing rod when the bite is very good; in this case, it is more profitable to fish with a double (see ruff). However, in the middle of summer, when the perch is full and becomes (especially large ones) more cautious and careful, it is necessary to catch it with one fishing rod, changing places more often. At this time, sometimes it’s enough for one to break loose, and he takes the whole flock with him.
