A Week to Remember - Justin Grapes

This entry was posted on 1st March, 2017

It's not often that things all go right when targeting specimen size fish, so when everything clicks into place and things go to plan it's all the more sweeter. As in previous blogs, chub fishing has been at the front of my mind mostly. However, I have also been lure fishing for perch at lunchtimes

The chub fishing was going okay, with a scattering of chub over the weeks leading up to my week to remember and a picture was building on where to concentrate my efforts for the last few weeks of the season. With the Wensum being low and clear, the day time fishing was hard but not impossible. The start of my red letter week I had planed a Saturday session. I would be started at Bawburgh lakes to target pike.

I arrived at the lakes at first light and met up with fishing buddy Darryn. We started in an area I'd had a few pike from in the past. After an hour or so, neither of us had had any action so I decided to move one rod and twitch back the other rod. Within a few minutes the twitched rod was away. As the fish didn't move off very quickly, I thought it was sitting there devouring the fresh lamprey so I struck quicker than normal and with the rod bending over it felt like a good fish.

After a short tussle, the fish was in the net, the trace was unclipped, and the unhooking matt readied. The pike was unhooked, weighed at 13lbs 14oz, and it was returned to the lake and released as quickly as possible to reduce the stress on the fish.

After clipping a new trace on and putting the same piece of lamprey on again, I put it back in the same location from which I had just had the fish. Within 30 minutes I had another take but this time this fish was stripping off line so I gave it another couple of seconds to turn the bait. On striking, this fish also felt okay and put up a good account of itself. It looked a similar size in the net and on weighing it went over 13lbs as well! So, all in all, it had been a great start to the day.

I gave that swim another hour or so but, with no other action, I decided to move on to the next swim. After another hour went by, for some reason or another we decided to change tact and move on to the river and target chub from a stretch of the Wensum.



So, after packing up and driving to the Wensum we started walking to where we wanted to target. As normal, when there are two of us we leap frog each other from swim to swim. In my third swim I suddenly got a bite when I hadn’t expected one! At first, the fish didn't do much but as it got closer to me it started to give me the run around and after a hard battle the plump looking chub was in the net. On peeling the mesh back, she looked like a good sized chub so I called Darryn over to have a look and help weigh and photograph the fish. When we weighed the lump, it set the scales at 6lb8oz so I was well chuffed to say the least!

After that we did try a few other swims but with no luck, so we headed off home – pretty pleased with our efforts.



It was back to lunch time lure fishing for perch for the rest of the week, which I was really enjoying as I haven’t done a lot of this in my time so I was still learning lots with each session. I did have a tip off from a good friend (who is now living in the States) about what he was using out there for the large mouth bass so I popped on the internet and found some different lures to try out.

As with most days, I only get 20 minutes at lunch to find the perch and try and catch them. The first day I tried the new method, it was instant success, with a brace of 2lb perch! I had been thinking for a while that I wasn't doing something right and this was the evidence to confirm it.

The next day I had another two pounder and some back up pound plus fish too, but it was the third day of fishing that things went from good to amazing! After only a few casts I had a bite. It felt like a good fish but I thought that it surely couldn't be a perch as it felt too big. After a few seconds I caught sight of the fish – it was a perch after all – and, after panicking for a second and fumbling for the net, the big perch was landed. I took a few seconds to look at it before I got out the scales and I began to wonder if it could be my new personal best. I popped back to the van, retrieved my scales and weigh sling, and called my friend to take a picture. As I weighed the beast I was over the moon; it was my new PB at 3lbs 6oz!



The next couple of days saw a couple more nice perch to just over 2lbs, but nothing as special as my personal best fish. The weekend came and, with family commitment, it didn't look like I would get out. Luckily, at the last minute, I got a window of a couple of hours so I took a trip to the Wensum again to see if I could get a bite or two. On arrival, the river was low and clear so I knew it was going to be tough going. I tried a couple of banker swims with no joy before moving to my favourite swim for my last hour. I had a couple of casts in a couple of different areas of the swim which resulted in nothing so, on one last effort, I cast to the back of the swim where the fish normally sit and sat back with my hand on the handle ready just in case. Still nothing happened but I wasn’t ready to give up yet, so I twitched the bait so it moved around into the current. I repeated it again after a couple more minutes and bang I had a bite! I struck into what felt like a good fish from the start and, after a short but hard fight, the short and broad chub was in the net. At 5lbs 14oz, it was another cracking chub and a great end to a red letter week.