Pike perch is a bottom predatory fish. It feeds on a small fish, which has an elongated body. Basically it is bleak, gudgeon, ruff, roach, fry of other species of fish. Pikeperch usually does not touch large fish.Small eats with pleasure worms, larvae, crustaceans.
There is a close relative of perch, bersh. It feeds on worms and crustaceans even in adulthood, but it is much smaller and occurs more often in more southern latitudes.
The pike perch possesses good night vision and the changing color of scales. Just caught from the water, it has a darker color, especially at night. Then, when he falls asleep, it becomes almost whitish. On the back there is a large spiny fin, like a perch. By the way, his last close relative and has a lot in common with pike perch. The mouth is littered with a large number of teeth, from which large fangs can be distinguished. Bersh have them. It does not open very widely, so the fish in its diet is usually medium-sized.
Pike perch eyes are catlike and glow in the dark. Caught out of the water at night, it has an awesome appearance in the light of a lantern – luminous eyes, bared fangs, a splayed fin. Neither give – nor take, sea devil!
In the warm season, it is mainly nocturnal, going hunting to the shore, and sitting at deep places at night . The large one, whose metabolism is already slowed down, never leaves the channel ditches and deep pools, as there is enough food for it there. In the cold season it becomes more active during the day. But even in winter twilight, both morning and evening, is the best time for it.
Pike perch – schooling fish. He hunts the same way as perches. A pack of Sudakov tries to enter a flock of trifles from two sides, displacing it and snatching prey, masterfully pursuing and not letting it escape. Larger often hunt alone. Underwater shots well demonstrate the nature of the hunting of this fish in winter. Attracted by the game of bait, the pike perch unfolds so as to see it with both eyes and correctly estimate the distance. Then makes a shot. If the bait is located near the bottom and moves slowly, it can make a throw, guided by the senses and the sideline, trying to cover the prey with body and chin. When jig fishing about 20-30% of pike perches can be caught by the beard or by the belly, this is a normal situation.
Zander spawning occurs in April and early May, at a water temperature of 10-12 degrees. Mosque caviar this fish in fairly deep places, from one and a half to two meters. Places are selected near coals and flooded debris, near large stones, on which a pike perch can rub and spawn eggs and milt. After spawning, the male remains to protect the clutch for some time, driving away other fish from it. Then pike perch go to their summer camp sites. Usually these are deep pits near the sand spits, where many fry accumulate. In such places, the fish do not need to make large transitions for night hunting.
In the autumn, the fish trifle gradually moves away from the shore, and pike perch approaches it less and less, moving more often to the depths. His daytime bites begin. You can often catch this fish when night fishing for burbot, if you use a ruff as a bait or a rubber band. In this bite can be massive. Flocks of pike perch become larger by autumn. In winter, this fish keeps to its daily rhythm, making periodic fixed movements around the reservoir, the so-called “fish paths”, and never moves far from its familiar spots.
Studies show that most of the food pike-eater eats in the spring, during spawning, in front of it and a little later – more than 50%. In the spring and summer in the amount of pike eats a little less than its spring diet. And in the winter he eats only 3-4% of the annual volume. Therefore, the fact that the best time for zander fishing is winter is a delusion. It is best to catch him in the spring, but at this time fishing on him is prohibited and is poaching.
In addition, even if the caught pike perch guarding the clutch was released back into the water, he is unlikely to find his clutch of eggs, and she will die without being guarded. Therefore, in the spring it is better not to try to catch it even on the principle of catch-release, and in those places where spinning is allowed, you can switch to coastal perch fishing.
Summer bait and fishing methods
There are several ways to catch zander in the summer. The most publicized is spinning. Indeed, this is the first thing that comes to mind when they want to catch this fish. However, is it always effective? The fact is that in the dark of the day spinning baits are significantly inferior to natural baits and fry.
They distinguish the smell characteristic of a wounded fish and their behavior for pike perch more naturally than the most skillful game of the most advanced jig bait. And here come the game more traditional ways of fishing – squirrel donk and float rod with live bait on the hook. But most anglers still consider spinning more sporty, and then we will talk about spinning fishing.
Blesny
The two most common baits are jelly and silicone. Sinking wobblers, rattlin, mandula and other less traditional methods of fishing are used less often. From blades should prefer rotating. They give quite intense vibrations that are able to attract well the fish, focusing on hearing and organs of sense.
Excellent results show unconventional turntables – with holes in the petal, with an asymmetrical petal, without chromium. The color of the spinners is not very important here, but it is better to use good turntables that have a fluorescent color of the petal. You can determine it with a currency detector. In due course it is washed off, therefore it is necessary to change it from time to time.
There are many opinions that homemade turntables are better than serial ones. This is sometimes true. However, more often the fisherman, buying some spinner and trying to catch it, chooses one catchy, which brings a good result. Then he can lose it and buy the same in the store. If it was a cheap turntable, then the frequency of its behavior in water would be low. It seems that the same lure will not catch anything, and the angler will lose a lot of time before he finds his treasured lure again.
If it is a good lure of a well-known company, then it will have a high repeatability of behavior, and it will catch in the same way as it is torn off. You can even advise her friend, and he, too, will be able to catch her in these conditions. There is no point in talking about the repetition of the game of handicraft blades. They are made without the use of high-precision modern equipment and are usually unique. Those who want to catch zander on spinning should start with real branded turntables.
If we talk about firms, the universally recognized king of turntables is Mepps. The shape of all the classic turntables of this company can be divided into three groups – Aglia, Lon and Komet. Aglia has a petal-penny, a lawn has an elongated petal, and comets have something in between. Actually, such a qualification is rather arbitrary and more characterizes the sound component of the game, and even among the Aglia series there are long petals, but this is an exception. There is also a series of Fury, which has the most aggressive game, but it is less suitable for catching perch because of it.
These blazes are very different in game. Lones have a pronounced slow play, Komet – fast rotation, Aglia – from medium to fast speed. Komet also has the largest deviation angle of the petal and it starts up fairly quickly. For zander fishing, all three types of bait can be useful. It is believed that zander is best caught in the heart, but it is not. It all depends on the specific preferences of this fish in the reservoir.
The size of the spinners is also chosen under the conditions of fishing experimentally. It happens that the largest pike perch takes only the smallest minnow, and it happens that only the large one catches. In any case, fishing for zander is unlikely to involve ultralight spinning, and here it is better to use turntables from the third number and above.
By the nature of the wiring gives the best results intermittent. Here the wolves will lose, because they start up slowly enough, and with short draws you should choose Comets and Aglia. However, here again, everything depends on the fish. All other turntables usually copy Meps to one degree or another, and it is worth switching to them only after you have become accustomed to Mepps.
Free petal pinwheels are not traditional. They catch well and give less hooks in strong places than traditional ones. However, to catch them requires some skill, as their play is very unstable and depends heavily on the work of the angler with a rod and reel. To catch them, you need a sharper rod and a good reel. Often they are made on the basis of serial turntables, using the petals from them. But in the manufacture also a lot of subtleties. Catching these turntables is a type of jig fishing.
Jig lures
Jig baits are often used silicone. Rarely used bait with a free game, which work on a uniform wiring. The fact is that the most effective way to catch zander is to snap a drop shot. When catching, the weight is on the bottom, and the bait is mounted on the line 30-100 cm above it. For one movement of the weight, the coil makes two or three tugs with the bait, put it on the bottom, and play it in other ways with the help of a fishing rod. Such behavior best imitates a wounded fish that most attracts zander. Here they use not only silicone fish, but also worms, cuttlefish and other baits. You can also put the foam rubber fish, but they are good at catching a drop-shot only on a fairly strong current.
On silicone, one more thing can be said – it is best to use high-quality edible. Edible silicone allows you to catch much more efficiently, as it gives not only sound vibrations under water, but also a small trace of smell and taste in water. It is also desirable to use high-quality, soft bait, realistic imitating fish or aquatic creatures that have a fluorescent color. It can be determined on the currency detector. It is impossible to say anything categorically about the color of the lures, but it is noticed that dark worms are more effective than light ones, but fry-tails with a fluffy silicone fan, on the contrary, are better than light ones.
Such silicone is more expensive than usual, but it will be better to catch. You could even say that the type of bait is not as important as its quality. A brand-name vibrating tail, which is not often used for pikeperch fishing, will bite better than a poor quality worm, even with the most skillful game.
Only one thing is definitely to say about the size of the lures – you should not use silicone too large, more than 10 cm. If healthy gums work for pike just to cheer, then pike can ignore them. Sometimes success brings only the smallest gum, 2-2.5 cm long. Again, this is determined only by experience in specific conditions, and nothing else. Starting fishing is better with small baits, and then move on to larger ones, if they have not been successful.
Other jig baits, such as mandala, foam rubber, brooms are used much less frequently. Rather, maybe somewhere they are used, but usually give a result worse than the classic silicone. Therefore, a novice fisherman should use them only if there is no result on an ordinary silicone.
Other bait
Sometimes when fishing for zander, wobblers, spinnerbaits, rattlins are used. Traditionally, this pike bait. However, often when fishing on a perch they put them, and achieve good results. Sometimes it also helps to get away from scratch such a bait as a cicada. It is not bad for a perch, but when fishing on a summer pikeperch, it can show a good result. Use other bait is optional, when the pinwheel and silicone do not give results.
Winter bait
In winter, zander can be well caught on balancers, blades, rattlins and cicadas. For a beginner, it is advisable to begin winter fishing on a sudak fishing with balancers. They allow you to quickly localize the fish, not drilling holes as often as for spinners. This is important for large lakes, where the angler catches for the first time in his life. The balancer allows you to catch a large area, its game is not as complicated as the game of a lure, and it is not too expensive compared to rattlin. Also on the balance we practice fishing from a boat into a plumb, it allows you to achieve a good game even with the vibrations of the boat and the rod on the waves.
Rattlins are another type of winter lure. It is necessary to use winter rattlins, which play well on jerks. Rattlins are distinguished not only by the game, but also by the sound – there are rattlin rattles, with inaudible voice acting and noiseless. It is advisable for a fisherman to have several rattlines in the arsenal, and each with three types of acoustics so that it can be chosen not only by the game, but also by the sound. The technique of fishing on rattlins is almost the same as fishing on a balance weight.
Winter cicadas are a good pike bait. They have a quality game and are capable of replacing both balance and rattlin. The special game and brilliance make it possible to attract fish from an even greater distance, and localize it even faster. However, it is difficult to come across a good winter cicada, it is more often handicraft crafts that exist in a single copy in the arsenal of a fisherman. Fishing on cicadas is almost the same as on balancers and rattlin.
Blesny – traditional pike perch bait. Winter blades are divided into two types – gliders and cloves. A pike perch works best with a carnation or a carnation with a short pause. They help to tease the passive fish and force them to attack the lure with a stable and stable game. Gliders are used to search for fish, in modern fishing almost completely superseded by balance weights. Among the vast varieties of winter horseworms, only by experience can you choose the right one, and most anglers have their cherished lures, which he takes as the apple of an eye on a rainy day, in which the fish do not want to take anything else, and fears more death to catch it.
Among the winter baits you can mention the bottom bait. These are blued stukolk, bottom silt. They allow to catch passive fish well. All sorts of beetles, fantomas, show themselves well when fishing on a hard bottom, where pikeperch usually occurs. By the way, on a soft clay or oozy bottom it is almost useless to look for it. The stukolka is applied when catching burbot. It is a jig-type lure, on which there is a large bottom tide and a supporting platform. It is used with a nozzle in the form of a dead fish, a bundle of worms or meat. She rhythmically knocking on the bottom, burbot or perch approach her and press her chin. Most often, perch on all types of ground lures is caught by the beard, and not by the lip.
In conclusion, it should be said about the type of winter lures. For pike-perch, it is most reasonable to use medium-sized lures, 5 to 8 cm long. This applies to everything – both spinners, and balancers, and rattlins. The fact is that small bait has a small provocative ability, and pike can simply ignore it. But too large, too, may seem too big for the pike, strong, and he, especially in the dead of forest, will not spend the strength to catch up with solid prey.
