He told us “Knowing that the big perch in my local stillwater feed mainly during a short window in the morning, I got down to the fishery for the crack of dawn to try my luck. On arrival I noticed some grebes diving for fry at the back of a dying weedbed roughly 40 yards out, so with that in mind I decided to fish to that area.Out went a couple of feeders of crumb, chopped worm and maggot to get a small bed of bait down before I attached my hooklink with half a lobworm as bait. Two hours passed without a knock and I started to think it wasn’t going to be my day, when suddenly my bite alarm indicated a couple of bleeps and my bobbin jingled slightly.

That was enough for me to strike and I set the hook into a very big fish that plodded around, shaking its head viciously. As it surfaced I thought it looked to be a good ‘four’, and after netting the fish it wasn’t until I got it up the bank and onto my unhooking mat that I realised the sheer size of it!

At 5lb 2oz it was a way off the 6lb 4oz specimen I caught from the venue a few months ago, but you can never complain with a 5lb perch! It was my only bite of the morning and I drove home at 11:30am a very happy man.”