Piscatorial Quagswagging

...the diary of a specialist angler in around the Warwickshire Avon and its tributaries.

Wednesday 12 April 2017

Closed Season Zander Quest PT52 – A Tarradiddle up West Nipple

In this search for a canal double I do wonder sometimes why I’m fishing the far flung reaches that I do. The thing is having caught a few bigger fish now in one particular stretch surely I should be concentrating ones efforts in said place as it would only be a matter of time when one turns up again.

Knowing that a double was caught away from my frequent stomping ground albeit on the same canal, the area of concentration has just got another couple or three miles longer.

That may not sound much but considering that these transient fish will be there one day and not the next it’s no mean feat.


To add to that for me a big fish turned up in water with plenty of breathing space, another with barely enough room to swing a cat, this challenge I’ve decided to take on tests ones resolve as the probability of a double just gets bigger and bigger.

The reality is there probably isn’t a big Zander haven that has been stumbled upon it could be the fact I’ve been lucky and that large fish exist throughout the network amongst the endless schoolies, and that all one has to do is pick a stretch and fish it and fish it and fish it a little bit more, till eventually something worthwhile turns up.

As I said before you need a carpet bombing approach.


I’m sure it’s that simple....

So maximising the time the bait is in the water maybe the way to go about it, I suppose it’s all about the life juggling.

Now this is post PT52 of the closed season Zander challenge, if you consider I've probably fished the same amount or maybe a little more of these session outside the closed season the reality is, it's time consuming thats for sure, certainly not easy from the towpath I'm treading.

The weekend before last you see I could have easily managed a further hour maybe with bait in the water, that may not sound a lot but over a few sessions that would add up a considerable amount of fishing time and for someone with limited opportunity these days that’s probably not a good thing.

Obviously the clock changing helps as this session is just that, back for tea at a decent hour , see the kids and then still nearly 3 hours of fishing.

So this session was up at West Nipple again, there is big Zander here there must be, so for this session I wanted to fish in to dusk to mix it up a little, I’d never done that before here and maybe it’s another trick I’m obviously missing. Between these locks I've caught big fish, I'm sure an even bigger one is lurking around.


For various reasons as I suspected this sanctuary of mine will likely see a little more foot traffic, it was only a matter of time I suppose but on route to the West Nipple I bumped in to a fellow Zed angler who was fishing it for the first time with a lure set-up and somehow managed to blank. I knew what the question would be before it asked it, but after confessing it was my first time fishing this stretch too and I was just about to wet a line, it ended the conversation.

A much needed tarradiddle, but hey, no halm done.

Now the session couldn't be more different than the last. An hour and a half with two dead bait rods in a holding area, one a big bait with prototype / mule / trial stinger, zilch.


Up the stretch a little tight, against cover, nada....

baits changed, back to the holding area till sun down, diddly-squat....

On route back to the car in the banker swim till I could just make out the floats.....

Yeah, you guessed it, a blank.

What was I saying about them being on it, hmmmm !!!

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...