Big Perch Practice – River Dee (Ecclestone)

I bought a skiff style boat last year, but haven’t been out fishing on it yet because of “Dad” commitments, so today was more of a day to get the boat set-up right for fishing the lower sections of the Dee initially targetting perch and then pike when it gets a bit colder. I bought the bought from pike guide/author/minor angling celebrity Charlie Bettell who lived in the Broads but sadly passed away from cancer recently. I’m told he was quite a contentious character in the piking world (many of his forum contributions I've seen seem to have a knack of generating very heated arguments!), but my short dealings with him were all very positive – top bloke and very sad news.

To be honest, despite growing up in North Wales and fishing various stretches of the Dee from the day I bought a battered brown Austin Allegro from a mate in the Tivoli nightclub for 20 quid and became mobile, it’s always been a graveyard for me as regards results. The free Ecclestone ferry stretch has been particularly frustrating because it looks great and I’ve never had anything better than perch up to 6oz and pike to a shamefully crap 2lb. A low double followed a green/yellow spring dawg all the way to the bank once, but that’s about as close as I’ve got.

I can recall regularly sitting on rain sodden banks behind a quiver tip for 8 hours either without a rap all day, or picking up a single greedy trout or grayling. To add insult to injury, there was a big fish kill in the late 1990s on the river and I was dumbfounded when pike to over 25lbs; hoards of very big bream and chub and even barbel nudging double figures sadly came floating down the river. Rather than admit I was totally inept at that time, I am still clinging to the notion that the kill was actually as a result of a random fish farm dumping of dead stock, though I concede this is a truly pathetic long shot…

Recent years have been a bit better and I can now put together a good bag of dace or chublets in the faster sections of the river at and around Farndon; though, excluding Pike, a 1.5lb barbel stubbornly remains the biggest fish I’ve taken out of the river. I can only cling to the excuse that it’s a big, deep, powerful river in the main which is just plain hard to tackle successfully.

Anyhow, a few hours mooching about while looking at the sounder has identified some slacks with real depth of up to 20-25 ft and some casting/trolling of small plugs produced a couple of 8-10 oz perch. I need to get the rod set-up spot on and find out what this new “Drop-shotting” boat technique for perch is but I’ll give this some proper attention as soon as I can get out again…

Cheers

Mr Fish