What is it about big perch that makes them so very impressive? Perhaps it’s the fact that you just don’t see many of them. Take carp for example, spread all over the interweb, sprawled across the covers of magazines, big carp are everywhere. Apart from a few exceptions, the old good lookers, big carp don’t really float my boat, or cause me to say “Wow” very often. Big roach are very beautiful, and when over 2lbs, a dream fish and a target I’m yet to achieve, they are a much sought after specimen indeed, but even big roach don’t have that same impressiveness as a big perch. Big rudd, with their ruby red fins and 24 carat flanks, do come very close, but for me still don’t have the same wow factor a big perch has.
Perhaps it’s because as youngsters we caught so many finger sized perchlings, etching the fact that ‘no perch is bigger than your hand’ in your mind forever. Believe in something long enough and nobody will tell you different, but then one day you see a fish of a pound lying in the bottom of your net, how can this be? All reasoning is blown away, the things you always thought you knew to be true are shattered instantly, just like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy!
I think it’s a male thing too; we all wanted to be that tough boy at school, the one everyone respected and wanted to be around. Nothing scared him, nothing fazed him, he had his crew around him, and even if he didn’t, he could take care of himself anyhow. I think perch have the same characteristic, frightened of nothing, bold, respected with a do anything I want go anywhere I like attitude, and nobody can stop me. If we really think about it, if we could be a fish, we’d all want to be a big perch.
