The Close Season Zander Quest Pt.181 - Bush-Hunters and Bromatology

Work this week has gone a bit manic, you see the first prototype build for the car I'm working on is getting ever closer and I've various parts I'm designing that need releasing to the suppliers so the tooling can be kicked off, the 3D printer fed with some meaningful data and the 5 axis milling machine woken from its slumber. 

The problem is you always miss stuff that is starring you in the face and that can lead to like this Zander quest I've got myself in to and where I've been chasing ones tail. 

Busy busy, not a bad thing, I'd rather be rushed off my feet than not, also with the canals clear last week I sort of lost my mojo a little and to be honest, I've chilled mostly this working week where I managed to have the first BBQ of 2021. 

Ok only marinated chicken for this inaugural charcoal charring but in 22 degrees it was very pleasant indeed as were the painkiller cocktails. 

Anything to try and get in to the summer spirit where hopefully things will get back to normal as they can be after the 12mths of the pandemic and the inevitable eudaemonia puncher. 

Now at the end of March 2016 ones canal Zander escapades stepped up a notch when out of the blue I caught a 7ber.  . At the time seasoned Zander veteran Danny when first seeing the fish in the net and the length of it thought it would go bigger on the scales. 

It was long and lean not rotund and short like me though however it meant after the capture of that fish I was gradually climbing up the rungs of the big canal Zed proverbial ladder. 

If it had been feeding like many of them do or actually spawn bound things might have been very different, but it did show what lurks beneath these mucky waters where up to that point ones results were very mixed indeed.

Now that swim was known as 'Mick's Bush' and like many of the larger Zander I catch, despite fishing the same swims the same fish won't show itself ever again. 

That's my experience anyway they are very unlike the larger territorial Pike who tend to like the same area and more than happy to don their smoking jackets and chill with their pipe and slippers.

I've had sessions where I've caught 8-10 schoolies from the same cover and that cover providing its still there in these CRT pruning times invariably you'd catch from their again. The lunkers though a different story, those don't give up easily.

A chance conversation at a stretch of river before the season end I got chatting to a fella who was a fellow Zed head. Now he'd been fishing an area I've not really fished in anger if I'm honest but it was on the agenda for this years quest when the lockdown restrictions were eased. 

That has happened now luckily and as it happens I will now started to venture further afield. The boats now starting to move and many having to try and empty their toilets before all hell breaks loose and the stools make a break for freedom

Now like 'Mick's Bush' he had a similar location on the canal and actually put me on to it which I was surprised at. (maybe he saw the pain in my eyes) 

This swim was a little different though as the fish seemed to be much larger to come from the same swim, one being a double apparently and that's when my eyebrows raised, and my bat ears kicked in. 

Surprise, Surprise it was a swim with cover !!!

The reports from the ground during the week the water turbidity is now back to how I like it, the dirtier the better, it can make a big difference providing the Zeds haven't felt an electrode probe up their jacksies and either moved on or ended up on the chilled counter at Billingsgate Market. 

With the bank holiday weekend upon us and the fact I'm taking a much needed week off the 2nd week of the Easter holidays where hopefully I can enjoy my first pint since Mid-November (I think) and I've plenty of fishing time available to me. 

So this short after work session just in to dusk would there be fish in situ ? With my back still not 100% I'd also do a little roving to try and drop on a fish. There is cover here as well not just in this one swim and cover is a magnetic for Zander, so anyway, enough of the rambling, how did I do ?

Well I will not beat about the preverbal bush !!! what an awesome short session !!!!

To cut a long story short, talk about X marks the spot, 9 Zander caught over 2 hours and one Pike (I assume lost). I had one of the most mad feeding spells as well when I couldn't keep a float in the water, 5 fish in twenty minutes or something. 

The biggest a respectable 5lb 7ounces. There is Zander here in numbers and one of those swims I'll remember for a long time.

I'll be back, in-fact the tackle is in the car for a go tomorrow morning !!!!

I was certainly thankful for the information shared and it's a great time to fish for Zander at the minute with the water getting back to normal so I need to cram in as many sessions as I can now. I'm just hoping a big girl will slip up in the coming weeks.