Canal Zander – Music to my Ears

With the river out of sorts and Sam eager for a fishing session I did offer the ‘joys’ sat at a mud puddle to catch some ten a penny lipless mud sifters but no, he asked.

“I want to catch a Zander on the canal”

Couldn’t have Zed it better….

Now luckily for us there is plenty to go at in the locality and as someone who fishes for them exclusively in the closed season I’m a dab hand at catching them too.

And some bigger ones have graced my net 7, 8 and 9 lbers.

My standard method I leapfrogging areas of cover with two rods till the fish are found.

In the winter they tend to be laid up and then that’s when the bigger fish usually reveal themselves and in the summer and autumn months they move around in packs and pockets where multiple captures and runs can be achieved.

The float set-up goes like this from top to bottom, float stop, white bead, small inline pike float (Drennan Zeppler being my favourite) drilled bullet, quick change bead, 18lb fluorocarbon and then a offset Sakuma Manta size 1. It’s been perfected over many a trip, by fishing over-depth the float sits angled or dead flat on the surface and any interest on the Roach deadbait is easy to see.

When the fish picks up the bait the runs are brilliant to see, they can go from left to right in stages, can go from static to quick in a split second and then in an entirely random fashion.

But staring at floats ain’t for little Sam at the minute, he needs to be a little more active.

So I was behind the floats he had a lure rod equipped with a Berkley Havoc white worm to work the margins.

After an hour or so without much happening in a couple of usual hotspots Sam had a little Zander drop off the lure.

Gutted he was….

But then the left hand float goes off and he’s witnessed his first Zander run….

It was only a small schoolie which is the norm but it had engulfed the bait so well it was acting like a gobstopper.

Hook removed, baits back out, nothing doing.

On to the next swim, this time Sam casting rather than working the margins a Zander took a liking to the lure. His first canal Zander was on, he is quite confident now playing fish and with him shouting

“Oh my God, oh my God !!!”

The fish was quickly landed, rod down

“High Five Dad” jumping in the process, “My first canal Zander”

He was well chuffed.

So with time against is it was on to the last swim. One bait tight to the lock overflow, the other in the middle of the channel, the lure working the edge.

Within minutes the roach deadbait tight to the brick was on the move but this time Sam wanted to strike and play the fish on the bigger rod.

And a good job of it, he did too.

A passer-by expecting him to be playing a small Perch not a 2lb Zander.

He went away happy, I well, I'm hoping he will become a fellow Zed head.

Warwickshire Avon – Cockamamies and Crocodiles

Back in 2005 Richard Lacy a bridgekeeper at ‘Sellers Bridge on the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal spurred cryptozoological interest and raised the un-manicured eyebrows of the member of the Centre for Fortean Zoology to conduct a field trip of Lilliput proportions to try and find….

“a fully airborne, caiman-like animal" lunging from the water at a mallard”

A crocodile monitor from the CFR (yes you heard), Andy Stephens, who followed up the sighting, said: "The ecosystem supports more than adequate numbers of food species to keep a single crocodilian, or indeed a small colony, well fed, as long as they could survive the rigours of the English winter." Possible warmer water influxes into the canal are being investigated.

A lovely dawn over Warwickshire 

The conclusion from the CFR was that no crocodilian could, in all likelihood, thrive in a UK climate without there being a source of heat to maintain its body temperature throughout the winter months. However what do the culverts drain, could they be the source of any flow into the river during winter, which might raise water temperature? The ecosystem supports more than adequate numbers of food species to keep a single crocodilian, or indeed a small colony, well fed. Clearly the terrapins manage, demonstrably, they have been here for a number of years.

The Gloucester and Sharpness Canal is a 15 1/2 mile long canal starting a mile north of the city of Gloucester and running south and west until it terminates at Sharpness docks, on the banks of the river Severn, some 1 3/4 miles north of the nuclear power station at Berkeley.

Some other unusual sightings on the national species database. Osprey, seals, dolphins, porpoises and who could forget the Chinese mitten crabs, not just crocs.

Now for the intriguing bit….

The Canal is on average 100 feet wide, 14 feet deep in the middle, tapering to 3 or 4 feet in the margins, and it contains some very bigger Zander hence why as a double figure canal Zed chaser it's appeared on my radar.

Hmmm, I know a stretch of the Warwickshire Avon like that, and it is largely untapped, well with big baits and me anyway.

God knows what’s lurking amongst its depths…

It’s not quite uncharted as I’ve had the deeper out up here, and some rods to be fair, but up till this session results have been a little, how can I put, it…

Well, very patchy….

For a big fish that didn’t want the neighbours to see it naked when it swam from the bathroom to the bedroom, it is an ideal place for sanctuary seeking. In-fact it would be that dark down there a big Zander, Carp or even a Barbel could run around stark bollock naked without even a twitch from the curtains, a peak between a gap in the blinds.

So for this morning session in the gin clear waters of the Warwickshire Avon it was out with two deadbaits rods.

With the deeper out most of the section was between 9 and 12 ft but a couple of swims were notably deeper at 14ft. Now the Avon is low at the minute, very low to 14ft would easily be 15 or 16 or even more when levels are up to winter levels.

All encouraging signs, I must admit....

I cast both rods to some far side cover and the left hand rod within minutes goes off and the bobbin is jumping and the bait runner is going off.

I've found that with Zander I've never really had an issues with drop takes because of resistance, they give the bait a proper doing over most of the time.

So the fish is on, and it's keeping low, it's going to my left and putting quite a considerable bend in the rod. It's a powerful fish and is trying to get in to some marginal snags. I've applied more pressure now and managed to turn the fish. I can now see it in the clear water.

Oh my God !!!

Good be a PB beater, it certainly looks like it.

Net ready....

I never felt fully happy with the fight though, and sure enough if you've caught enough Zander like I have they are tricky customers.

Yeap, the first tail walk and shake of it's head, the fish is off and it goes back to it's lair.

FFS !!!!!!!!

There must have been quite a few Zander now in the swim. A run on the drop, two missed takes eventually I manged to bank a 4lber.

A couple more runs from small fish probably and then a Jack caught it was time to pack up.

Encouraging signs for the winter, oh yes !!!!

The first frost this morning too....

Appledore – Poppers and Ponses

I had to get my head down at work prior to this holiday, you see a cup holder had to be designed quick sharpish for a buck property for a client I am providing studio engineering support for. From the sketch from the mind of a madman, in to CAD in two days. It was a relatively complex design to, with articulating flaps, rotary dampers and buttons. I'd not designed one for ages so was quite nice getting ones head down.

Not a bad effort either, me thinks, ok the modelling wasn't parametric but hey, needs must, just needed to get a CAD model out quick for quote. Good thing is the design is divorced from the part it has to ultimately assembly to.

So if if it didn't work straight off once the rapid prototypes had arrived and it was assembled there was some fettling time to get it to work properly, if there were still problems then it wouldn't be shown, end of.

Nothing lost, nothing gained....

So headphones on, head down, Mixcloud and the Wifi battered.

The best mix out of the many,

Geju's from the 2017 Burning Man Festival,  my sort of repetitive beats....

Jobs a good'un, work complete....

The weather looked like it couldn’t be more different for this family trip down to North Devon, you see August last year we ventured down to Tamarisk Esturary View and it was a week of shorts donned, sun cream and cold beer.

This lovely bungalow backs onto the tidal Estuary of the Rivers Taw and Torridge and has some great views, particularly when the tide is going out and the sun is setting. The accommodation has privacy and has direct access from the garden to the coastal path and foreshore, even has its own look out at the bottom of the garden. (Shed)

We enjoyed the trip so much we booked up again…

The outlook you see was meant to be very mixed bag indeed, a big storm was rolling in on the Saturday because of a low pressure system from the Atlantic and rain, well lots if it apparently….

Waves, swells and wakes, well, they would be as big as houses….

So less sand would be likely be less trodden but with some nice scenic walking planned at the Tarr Steps clapper bridge and the River Barle in Exmoor and to Heddons’s Mouth I was looking forward to this trip.

But then as Danny put it, Michael Fish Syndrome seems to taint many intended trips out, you see with Metcheck, BBC weather, the Met Office and Accuweather, all seems to have different levels of inaccurate weather, nothing really can be planned properly these days.

Just got to pack for most eventualities such the uselessness of the meteorologists….

It’s October for God’s sake, the Daily Mail reported the day before we went

‘Surf's up! Waves up to 34 FEET high set to smash into Britain this weekend as Atlantic storm brings 50mph winds, heavy rain, flooding and even power cuts

Forecasters warn of flooding to homes, power cuts and delays to road, rail, air and ferry transport, Intense low pressure system will bring a swathe of strong winds over southern areas on Saturday with wave swells approaching 35ft that could strike the South West coast of England at 9am on Saturday.

Bunch of tarts these media lot are, then again anything to sell papers or to get the websites hits up to increase the advertising revenue….

For this holiday, obviously I brought a rod, (stupid question). You see last time on the last day of the holiday before I snapped my lure rod, I caught a bass on a popping frog and I loved the method so much, I decided to properly gear up for it.

So it was out with the Savage Gear lure rod, and proper popping lure I’d bought, got to spend my money on something haven’t I.

I’d hopefully cram a few short sessions in, I couldn’t be closer to the water, well when the tide was high anyway.

I was avidly looking at the tide times when we arrived….

Ok it was windy, very windy in fact, but storm Brian disappeared as soon as it arrived. The problem was for a few days the water was very coloured indeed, so maybe bait would have been the better option. But me and Sam stuck to the task in hand and went about trying to winkle out a bass.

I used the pop queen on the most past which is 105mm and 28 grams, it's a kind of bullet shape which made it a cracking casting lure. The slow erratic retrieve creates plenty of surface disturbance whilst a faster retrieve will make it dive just below the surface. When allowed to rest the pop queen sits its tale down and when given a sharp pull the cupped face will 'pop' when it dives in to the water.

Cast after cast, for a few mornings, nothing was doing at all, the bass were either not that, or not feeding. It was still coloured with visibility poor throughout the week.

Sam got bored, "Dad are we ACTUALLY going to catch anything"

"That's fishing for you Son"

"Fancy a carp lake the weekend"

"No Dad, can we go to the river"

A pub crawl in Appledore with my brother with two of the pubs having an open Mike night, it finished off a cracking week, lots of sea air, good food and a belly busting copious amount of the local beer.


My favourite, well, probably the dark 'Beast of Exmoor" that was 6.6% ( I think)

The fishing well, all a bit Mehhhhhhh !!!