Saturday 23 March 2019

The Close Season Zander Quest Pt.110 – Porridge Islands and Petticoat Pensioners

This experiment will put your Diet Coke and Mentos time consuming volcanos to shame. Geologists at the University of Buffalo are heating rocks for 4 hours at 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit to see what happens when volcanic lava meets water. What do they expect? Big explosions, of course.

The eruption at Eyjafjallajökull was more explosive due to the presence of water. Events like that don’t happen often, but there is a threat of a big impact when they do. As geologists, we want to understand the conditions that generate explosions — how much water do you need? How much time?


In the spirit of school science projects, the geologists will pour the molten lava through a 4-foot (1.2 meter) tube to simulate an underground river of lava. They will then pump water into the tube and measure reactions using microphones, thermal cameras and pressure sensors. With a budget far larger than I am prepared to spend on one, the team will be protected from the heat by thermal reflective outfits.

The Geohazards Field Station where the research will be conducted sounds like an amusement park for geologists. Opened in 2012, the first experiment staged there involved detonating dynamite under gravel, ping pong and tennis balls to model how debris flies during a volcanic eruption.


Now the one me and Sam built for his school project wasn't quite to that scale, which is a shame as I'd like to cause a kerfuffle, and to the untrained eye it is one that has been send before. But look a bit closer you can see the battery pack for the red chasing electroluminescent wire...

....yeap, little Sam's model is anything but static, it glow and looks like lava, yeah you heard me it GLOWS !!!!

Now if that don't get get an extra Dojo, I won't bother going the extra mile again, after all the project cost me nearly 40 quid, 40 bleeding quid....

Anyway talk about going the extra mile back on track for this ridiculous quest of mind where you cannot argue I've not given it a good go, for this quick afterwork session I was up at the upper reaches of the sweetbread area.

An area largely unexplored, untapped potential, a lunker lurking. Strangely this area always throws up a pike or two, I cannot really put my finger on why either as it looks like any other stretch of canal I fish, the clarity as turbid in the main with the odd clearer area.

Now as pike are few and far between in my Zander spots I don’t use wire trace, a decent Fluorocarbon more than man enough to land a jack who wants in on the action.

For this session though I swapped to wire because if there was a Pike around that wanted a chomp on the deadbait, I’d rather be able to land it without issue.

The Bering Strait is a long so it’s a matter of leapfrogging areas of likely looking holding spots and then fish either side of the locks to try and locate fish. I’d not fished it in angler but I’d rarely blanked in the past despite it being tougher than the ones well-trodden.

The theory being maybe a larger fish is harbouring up here away from the noise and hustle and bustle from the classroom. Tackle the usual, you know the drill.

1 deadbait rod, 1 lure rod equipped with a Westin CurlTeez


As expected the first swim fished produced a small pike that took a liking to the smelt offering. The bite didn't take long either, maybe 6 or 7 minutes of being in the water. I'm beginning to rely on smelt more and more these days, it's such a reliable bait for pike particularly, but it helps that the Zander like it as well.

So as I leap frogged the long  stretch with the smelt in fish holding looking swims and the lure in as many swims as possible bites were not exactly prolific.


Eventually a small Zander nailed the lure in oddly another one of my banker swims, hmmm. The water is relatively clear up this stretch as I said before but I was suprised just how hard the fishing was. Ok I shouldn't moan because it was a nice morning and nice to be out but a few more bites wouldn't have gone a miss.

The Zander are a lovely dark colour when the water clarity is like this though, I just need to catch his Grandmother.


One thing I don't seem to do enough of is to fish around boats. If you think about it, an ideal place for the fish to seek some solitude and also to hideout waiting for unsuspecting fish to pass. To be fair all the Zander over 5lb I've caught on the canal though have been in open water and also tight to cover.

Maybe I'm missing a trick, but then, maybe I should stick to my favourite stretch, I'm sure eventually it will come good. I like finding new places to fish though, so we'll see.

So where to fish next then, decisions decisions....


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