Closed Season Zander Quest PT48 – Lucky8isation

I was in Shanghai when the Beijing Olympic Games kicked off, all very bizarre it was too.

It wasn’t the fact that I was watching it in a tiny corner shop with a tiny cathode ray TV 6,000 miles from home with an inquisitive audience thinking what is this funny looking Westerner doing here, but the opening ceremony began at 8.08pm on the 8th of the 8th 2008.

No 8 is the luckiest number in Chinese culture because 八 sounds like 發 (fa), which means 'wealth', 'fortune', and 'prosper' in Chinese.Multiples of eight are even better, as 88 bears a resemblance to 囍 (shuāng xǐ), or 'double happiness'.

While the Chinese will go to great lengths to avoid 4 in daily life, they will try to incorporate 8 wherever they can.

Now clearing out ones wardrobe the other day I found the few pairs of lucky 8 embroidered boxer shorts and keyring I bought on the said business trip in one of the tourist tat shops along the Bund in downtown Shanghai

It’s a big money earner too, the number plate A88888 went for a bucket load of dosh as did the phone number with all digits being eights, which was bought by Sichuan Airlines in Chengdu for CN¥2.33 million. Also many airlines routes have 8 in their flight routes for obvious reasons.

So with my lucky 8 pants donned and the keyring secured on ones permit holder for this and subsequent fishing trips.

In the quest for a cut double I will need any luck I can get, it really is a needle in a haystack challenge and the more I fish for big Zander on the canal, you need luck and plenty of it.

Now talking of lucky captures, take a butchers at this Barbel, Leamington Anglers Association Bailiff Barry Swain caught from the canal recently, yes you heard right, the bleeding canal.

Now if I caught it I’d want to relocate it back to the river but then I’ve caught a couple of reasonable Barbel out of one of the local pools and they don’t seem to mind being contained within still water looking at their condition. Judging by the large carp that reside in the cut there must be an adequate supply of food and this Barbel must have managed to get its pies from somewhere.

Heck, I bet even an otter doesn't come to visit.

Come first of May if I’d caught that I’d be looking at 10 Brucie bonus points in the bloggers 2017-2018 challenge.

It didn’t quite look like the claimed size if you ask me, but then who am I to judge it was still a decent fish all the same.

I think I know where it was caught from too, Danny fancy a dabble ?

One rod out for Zander the other out for Barbel, who'd have thought it.

This short after work session in to dusk or thereabouts I was at an area that has been quite productive in the past with a proper'un caught and one that got away but with only a couple of hours to dangle ones roach sections I decided to stay put in one swim rather than move around in my usual roving fashion.

I've found they can be here one day, but not the next. All very disheartening, but don't want it too easy now do I.

Now they are coming up to spawning time too, so if there is ever a time to catch a big Zander it's now. Big Zander are females you see, they visit the spawning site quickly and then continue their way back to feeding areas. Male Zander stay to protect their site and they aggressively hit nearly everything that dares to come close them, dare I say it, find a spawning area they can be quite easy to catch.

I want a big female though, don't we all !!!!....

This I'm sure is a good feeding area, in fact out of all the locations I fish this area appears to be very well populated and having spoken to a pleasure angler fishing with maggots, many'a species too.

So it holds fish, so much so, I'm planning to revisit the same time next week.

So the first bite came after an hour and it turned about to be a huge tree stump, but not one to look down on these things, at least it tested the strength of the set-up as dragging that from the bottom wasn't a mean feat.

It was weirdly quite so I decided to up sticks to an area with some cover to see if they were tucked up out the way but after half an hour without even a nudge it was back to the original swim.

On the way back a barge had lost it's front mooring and it was drifting aimlessly around, despite my efforts to get someones attention there was obviously no one on board.

Luckily in 20 minutes a boat came down to the blockage and with the aid of a rope it was sorted.

Hmmmm wonder if salvage rights exist on the cut.

Within minutes of positioning the deadbait rod the floats starts to go and a fish was on.

That's the thing with float fishing for them, the bite doesn't vary that much, you could be connected to a 10lber or a scrapper...

Sadly this was a scrapper, a small schoolie with eyes bigger than its belly. Now on removal of my hook as much lighter hooklink was half way down its gullet, probably someones worm and size 16 hook it took a fancy to. I cut the line as far down as I could so at least it wasn't as tethered as it was before.

With ten minutes to go before my self imposed finishing time the float rod goes again and this was a bigger fish, but still nothing to right home about.

Weirdly nothing on the lure and yet the conditions seemed perfect, clarity about a few inches that was it.

I might try some red predator liquid next time....

now where have all the Zander gone, this area is usually a hotspot.

Lucky 8, well they are getting bigger, I'll give it some time.