The cormorant and the shag remain with us throughout the year, but particularly on our more northern shores, upon whose rocky shelving precipices they station themselves, and perform the offices of incubation, while stragglers occasionally taking a wider range, with outstretched neck and vigorous wing sweep along the coast, and entering the mouths of the rivers, follow their course in quest of food, to the lakes inland.—Bewick.
Pellet, s. A little ball; a bullet, a ball.
Perch, s. A measure of five yards and a half; a pole; something on which birds roost or sit; a kind of fish peculiar to ponds and rivers.
Perch have one particularity, which is contrary to the nature of all fish of prey in fresh water (and they are so voracious as to attack their own kind), that they are gregarious, swimming in shoals. The body of the perch is deep, the scales very rough, the back much arched, and the side-line approaches near it: the irides are golden, the teeth small, disposed in the jaws and on the roof of the mouth, which is large; the edges of the cover of the gills serrated, on the lower end of the largest in a sharp spine, and the head is said to consist of no fewer than eighty bones; the colours of the perch are beautiful, the back and part of the sides being of a deep green, marked with broad black bars pointing downwards; the belly is white, tinged red; the ventral fins of a rich scarlet; the anal fins and tail (which is a little forked,) of the same colour but rather paler.
The perch affords the angler great diversion, and not only the baits are various, but the modes of using them. Of worms, the best kinds are small lob-worms which have no knot, brandlings, red dunghills, or those found in rotten tan, all well scoured; the hook may be varied from No. 2 to 6, being well whipt to a strong silk-worm gut, with a shot or two a foot from it: put the point of the hook in at the head of the worm, out again a little lower than the middle, pushing it above the shank of the hook upon the gut; take a smaller one, beginning the same way, and bring its head up to the middle of the shank only; then draw the first worm down to the head of the latter, so that the tails may hang one above the other, keeping the point of the hook well covered. This is the most enticing method that can be adopted in worm-fishing; use a small cork float, to keep the bait at six or twelve inches from the bottom, or sometimes about midwater: in angling near the bottom, raise the bait very frequently from thence almost to the surface, letting it gradually fall again. Should a good shoal be met with, they are so greedy, that they may be all caught, unless one escapes that has felt the hook: then all is over, the fish that has been hooked becomes restless, and soon occasions the whole shoal to leave the place. Two or three rods may be employed, as they require time to gorge sufficient to allow the angler to be prepared to strike them.
Baits for the perch are loaches, sticklebacks, with the spines cut off, miller’s-thumbs, horse-beans boiled (after the place has been well-baited with them, put one at a time on the hook), cad-bait, bobs, and gentles.
Although generally termed a bold biter, the perch is extremely abstemious in winter, and scarcely ever bites in that season, but in the middle of a warm sunshiny day; he bites best in the latter part of the spring, from seven to eleven in the forenoon, and from two to six in the afternoon, except in hot and bright weather, and then from sunrise to six in the morning, and in the eve from six to sunset. If a day be cool and cloudy, with a ruffling south wind, perch will bite during the whole of it. In clear water, sometimes a dozen or more of perch have been observed in a deep hole, sheltered by trees or bushes; by using fine tackle and a well-scoured worm, the angler may see them strive which shall first seize it, until the whole shoal have been caught.
The perch may be angled for and taken until the end of September, and indeed at particular times all the year round; but the preferable season is from the beginning of May, to the middle of July.