Closed Season Canal Zander Quest PT82 – Quims and Quockerwodgers

The shameless arts of the sycophant are not monopolised by Mr. Quocker-wodger and his congeners. Now similarly my strings of action are also often being pulled and controlled by others, and sometimes I feel like that veritable wooden marionette on a string. It’s part of the territory being a family man after all which I knowingly signed up for. To be honest I’ve grown to get used to it now, fishing however, I have ultimate control, certainly, who, what, why,

Ok you’ve got me, ‘when’ is up for negotiation certainly, and I have to fit those around the calendar and the governors I serve but to be honest, on the most part, I don’t do badly and seem to be fishing more than ever now.

Not quite master of my own destiny just yet, but getting there….

A little like this session really, having concentrated on an area I discovered by chance which to be honest, has been a bit of an eye opener in terms of Zander numbers and size, last minute I decided to change location  and fish somewhere where I'd walked past and hadn't fished. You see in the eyeballing vicinity of the ‘deep bit’, Zander were getting ready to spawn or about to, such was the marginal and root activity.

It was that active in places I didn’t want to disturb their fun so moved elsewhere, but it was clearly obvious the amount of fish I was catching till I ran out of deadbait, the males were hanging around in the wings as they wanted to participate in the fish and frolics with the clearly rampant egg ejecting females with their thingies on show.

In one swim in particular which was made up of tree roots extending far out in to the cut there was a proper bustling bash of bukkake and bacchanal going on. With my forearm raised to shield myself from the revelment I quickly passed with my conscious intact and my mind clear, this isn’t for me, I'd leave it to those that share their free time with Stanley Victor Collymore.

So this area could do with a bit of a rest before fishing it again and to be honest, probably not a bad thing. Because ok,it’s nice to find an area that is productive, but the suspicions are the bigger fish are less likely to be where the rave is happening and are looking at the stars in the chill out room.

So luckily the area I refer to as the ’Green Lagoon’ is just that….

....it’s an area that is quiet, really quiet and away from the recent revelers and there is a good reason for that but if I mention why, the location it may well be revealed. Foot and bike traffic nope, with just the odd boat from time to time, so much so, 25% of 5 hours sessions can be fished without a disturbance from any of them. Maybe there is a paranormal presence going on or something, however I’ve yet to experience it myself, well apart from the bats which seem bigger than ever here when dusk is upon us.

As a solitude seeks myself it’s just the sort of area where a larger and wiser Zander would be hiding out to get some peace away from the noise and nooky....

Now I’d had fished within in waters for maybe 20 minutes after I used the deeper to find its depth recently and again it’s a deep area of canal where in places exceeds 5 foot. So for this short evening session it was out with the deadbaits again, this time sections of Roach and I’d fish a few likely looking holding areas to try and track down something of size that could help put a stop to this needle in a haystack quest of mine.

As I’ve said before I really do enjoy fishing for Zander but I’d like to catch a double before the CRT ship them all off to Billingsgate fish market to boost their Christmas party fund…..if you think about it and and the electrofishing being a complete waste of time such the naturalisation of these fish, they could start with a few sandwiches, then move on to a buffet with Christmas crackers the following year and then in a few years time a full on sit down meal with a free bar.

Lovely Jubbly, hmmm wonder if I can get in on the act....

But then why would I, as one of those few anglers that chooses to fish a canal in the closed season I love catching them. The water temperature had dropped so I decided to bring along my little Tenkara fly rod which I'd fitted with a pole float. I'm sure the Zander with their recent excesses might not be up for feeding so with a handful of maggots it might be a nice distraction for the motionless floats.

And you know what, I was right....

You see after fishing a couple of swims if was clearly obvious the Zander were not up for it, not one nibble on the sections of dead roach and I'm sure even if I had smelt on the end of them, they would have been left alone too. The pole float on the other hand was quite active with 4 perch and one bream caught maybe 6ft out from the near margin. A nice distraction to be honest and nice to see there are fish other than Zander to be caught.

Now talking about distractions whilst as the light was going behind me an almighty deep and loud Roooooooooooooooooooarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr !!!!!!!!!!!!!! came out of nowhere and made me jump up and look behind me. It happened a couple of times too, and a noise I'd not heard before. There is a field behind but it would need a scramble up the muddy bank to access it, and maybe that wouldn't be wise it could be the Warwickshire bigfoot or something.

I'm happier fishing alone on the towpaths and rivers beyond dusk these days but this noise really did get me overthinking what it was. Probably a badger said Dan, and I reckon he was right on the money, after packing up and getting the hell out of there, listening to some badger calls on YouTube, the Wail is the call of an infant in distress, usually when the cub is isolated from the mother. As infant distress increases, so does the intensity and rate of wailing. Thank God for that, I thought I might have to call upon the hairy folk from the local cryptozoology group.

Next session is a friendly match down at Little Geary's where I will be upholding the tradition of using a centrepin and Sunday I'm going to take a visit to 'Mick Bush' again as I've mot fished it for ages...