A hammering....

Zander 4 - Mick 0

I joined a friend of mine Simon who was fishing the cut for an hour or so yesterday evening, having only managed to catch small Zander over the past couple of sessions I decided to have a change of tactics. I upped the savage gear 4play shad size to 11cm's and had a sleeper rod out with a small roach deadbait with the head cut off on a simple running rig. Single hook rigs for Zander seem to be successful so I used a Gamakatsu G-Point Circle Hook (GP407).

The previous last two sessions I never had a touch on the deadbait but today it was the complete opposite as I had 6 runs, hooked 4 Zander and landed 0. All 4 were on for what seemed a decent length of time and yet all managed to lose the hook. One was half decent too and put a nice bend in my 1.75TC rod. Any tips welcome as I'd rather not switch to size 8 trebles just yet. I'm new to Zander fishing but they certainly have tough bony mouths so maybe a stiffer rod would be better as would be a harder strike, maybe I didn't set the hook properly.

I've certainly found a so called Zander hotspot because in around 3 hours fishing this particular swim I've hooked, lost and landed more Zander than I have fingers. The issue I can see is the size of the fish in this area, there is no doubt biggun's here, I've seen the pictures. But it looks like you need to get through the countless greedy small ones, find the lone bigger fish that don't like to socialise and work out the diural feeding patterns with time on the bank. I've give it a couple more goes on the cut before switching species but when the new season is with us I'll definitely try for them on the Warwickshire Avon.

You are always learning when fishing, no doubt about that.