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Text and pictures. K. Tapani Loisa

Catching perch is easy when the stripeshirts are on the move and eager to strike. At such a time the best lure you can choose is in most cases a jig. The only problem there is to find the right striking colour. For perch feeding frantically on the surface you can also offer a spinner or a wobbler; even a fly will do nicely. The situation is a bit more problematic when the perch stay down by the bottom and sleep off the heat of the summer day or are making plans to reproduce somewhere around the spawning rocks of the springtime.In such circumstances the angler had better take up bottom angling with a tasty and smelly worm, a piece of fish or a whole baitfish as his bait.

                      
Left from up swiss, self made, swiss and self made bombette. Underneath these a jingle bell alarmsystem. Right a  Kuusamo-bombette and right a sbirolino

The traditional hook and line type gear with a nut or a lead as the weight will catch perch even in rather bad conditions. In Central Europe bottom angling has been developed into a refined form of art. there are two basic types of weights used.The Bombette is a metallic slide weight with an antenna; using it you fish right down at the bottom. The advantage it offers compared with nuts and other fixed weights is its utter sensitivity which results in rapid filling up of the catch bucket.Sbirolino on the other hand is a plastic weightwith an antenna which sinks at a predetermined speed. With it you can fish effectively for those perch that are suspending or else loitering down by the bottom. After you have targeted the school e.g.using the sounder, you can read on the side of your sbirolino just how fast you will be able to sink the bait in front of the noses of the fish. the hook used is normally flatheaded because the orthodox setting of the worm on the hook is easiest on such a hook. An essential part of the rig is the triple swivel which according to its name consists of three swivels in a row. The purpose of the triple swivel is to prevent the twisting caused by the movements of the hooked bait. There are special types of rods developed for bottom angling with exchangeable tips of varying sensitivity. The lighter the weight used the more sensitive the tip must be.

A diligent fisherman will, of course, make his own Bombettes with antennas. The product range of Kuusamon Uistin includes Bombette weights (5, 14 g and 18 g) so you don´t have to be a do-it-yourself wizard when using this system. In Abu´s new catalogue there are a few change-tip rods intended for bait angling. Naturally the selections of the Central European DAM and Cormoran include rods of this type. The hardest to find are propably the triple swivels; I doubt if there are any available in Finland, so you need to do some creative trimming; you can join two or three swivels together by using small split rings. At least Mustad offers a flatheaded baithook (nr 209) equivalent to the Kum Ho hooks in the picture.

                     
The fishbait is hooked by pushing the hook through both jaws. The worm is hooked so that first the hook is pushed in from the head so long way,  that finally the head of the worm is over the eye of the hook on the leaderline

                      
Two knots to tie a flat eyeless hook on the leaderline

In a well organized Central European fishing gear shop there are bait automatons where you can select worms of various species or differing aromas. Fly grubs are also available around the year. Strong scented ´leafworms´ are appetizing to the perch. You can even offer large earthworms to lunker perch. All small shiny fishes like bleak, baltic herring, smelt, vendace and roach fish fry are excellent for use as baitfish. Acquiring them usually calls for use of very sensitive angling gear. A chain of a few hooks composed of nr 16 or smaller silver or gold hooks is good for catching bleaks. A worm as the bait doesn´t usually cause moral scruples for the user; evidently people don´t think these ladder nerve system creatures feel pain acutely. Using live fish as the bait has been critisized severely. A hook set through the jaw hardly causes any more pain than the hook the fish itself grabs into its jaws or gills. What, then, can be considered sport fishing? Is angling farmed fish from the rearing ponds or rapids sport fishing; what about catching and releasing the same individual time and again. I strongly doubt that a trout worked to the brink of exhaustion is a 100 percent sure to recover. I think there are three stages of climax in fishing: the strike and the following working of the fish, landing the fish and a delicious portion, made of the catch, well seasoned on your plate. If you don´t want to use live baits also dead baits and pieces of fish flesh work as baits in bottom angling.

                  
               Whitefishes love worms

The main line on the reel should not be too thick. The recommended thickness is between 0.20 and 0.25 mm. You should have several thicknesses of snell line in reserve e.g. 0.10 - 0.14 and 0.18 mm. The snell line should also not be thicker than the main line. The thickness will be chosen according to the type of the bait. When fishing with a worm you use as thin a snell as possible. Accordingly, if you have a largeish fish bait you also need a thicker snell line. The length of the snell between the lead and the hook can be between 0.5 and 1.0 metres. The choosier the perch are the longer and thinner the required snell is. Last summer I was a Bombette apprentice in Brändö. One of the teachers had a 60 cm snell and the other one had an 80 cm snell. The perch weren´t striking at all, I personally, had only some jerks at my jigs so I concentrated on sunbathing and on learning the Bombette technique. The one with the shorter snell boated good sized perch at even intervals, but the man with the longer snell actually groped them in the catchbox one immediately after the other. Both the guys were using worms as baits so the only explanation I could figure out for the different pace of boating was the length of the snell.

The angling technique with the Bombettes is simple. You can choose the right size of the lead according to the depth. You throw the Bombette rig over the presumed dwelling site of the fish. The you tighten the main line so that tthe rig lies straight along the bottom. A living worm of fish will move enough for basic luring. If you use a dead bait you have to move it gently by using movements of the tip of the rod and by reeling the line in little by little. The vibration of the tip will show you when a perch has come to nibble at the bait. You let the fish taste the bait until it starts to move the line in a decisive manner. That´s the right time for the counter strike!

                           
                     Jumbo perches hit on living baits