Most fishermen have, at one point or another, spent time fishing for perch. This moody predatory fish, which is distributed all across Europe, is a favourite among kids – and, for some, they turn into a lifelong obsession. Morten Valeur has spent more than thirty years fly fishing for perch. Along the way, he has developed specialized strategies and flies, and he targets perch on the surface in shallow water, and at the deep end with sinking lines. In the following, Morten explains a little bit about how he ties and fishes his favourite perch fly, the Flash Tail Beast, which is specifically designed for fishing with sinking lines. In the beginning, it might seem a little bit daunting to venture out onto a big lake with your fly rod. It isn’t precisely dangerous to be out there, but the lake might strike you as an enormous place, when you’re sitting in a small boat or float tube casting a fly rod with limited scope and reach. However, keep in mind that this was the same feeling that a lot of seatrout fishermen were overwhelmed with,
before fly fishing for seatrout had been fully developed and perfected, says Morten Valeur. He no longer feels like he’s in over his head like he did more than 30 years ago, when he started fly fishing for perch. – I discovered fly fishing for perch rather coincidentally during a handful of trips to Swedish Lapland in the middle of the 1980s, and from then on, I starter targeting perch in my home waters. The great advantage with perch is its availability. And even though really good perch fisheries with actual trophy fish are relatively far in between, there is always perch fishing available. I personally fish a lot on Fussing Lake and Glenstrup Lake, which are the closest lakes with good perch fishing where I live in Denmark, Morten explains. Morten Valeur is honest about the fact that spin fishing is usually a much more effective technique when fishing big bodies of water. But that doesn’t mean a fly fisherman can’t have his fair share of fun and success. It’s just a matter of finding the right approach.
