Transient Towpath Trudging - Pt.149 (Canal Zander)

It was one of those damp, drizzly afternoons on the Warwickshire canals that make a man's whiskers sag and his bait box feel heavier than a sack of spuds. Old Bert, a lock-keeper with more stories than teeth, swore blind this was how the first zander slipped into our sleepy network. Not by some stuffy scientist or bored angler with a bucket, mind. 

No, this was proper Piscatorial Quagswagging at its finest. Bert reckoned it all started when a narrowboat called The Flying Dutchman (though the captain was from Solihull and about as Dutch as a pork pie) came chugging through the Hatton flight one moonless night. 

The fella had been over in Holland, doing whatever it is narrowboaters do when they get ideas above their station. Brought back a couple of "exotic pike" in a big plastic tub, didn't he? Claimed they were for his cousin's garden pond. 

Garden pond my backside. Well, as luck and strong ale would have it, the boat got wedged solid in a lock. Tempers flared, language turned industrial, and in the ensuing kerfuffle the tub went arse-over-tit. Two dozen confused zander, all teeth and attitude, went sloshing straight into the cut with a splash that sounded suspiciously like laughter. 

The captain apparently just shrugged, lit his pipe, and carried on towards Birmingham, whistling as innocent as you like. By morning the zander had already started eyeing up the local perch like they were tomorrow's breakfast. 

Within weeks they were spreading through the Warwickshire ring faster than gossip at a match night. Proper canal pirates, they were. Slimey, stripey, and always hungry. Bert says if you sit quiet by the bank at dusk you can still hear the ghost of that Dutchman (or Solihullman) chuckling every time a big zander grabs a lure, or eats that deadbait. 

Anyway enough of that !! it was one of those damp Midlands evenings where the canal looked less like a place to fish and more like the sort of watery ditch a sensible person would throw shopping trolleys into and avoid altogether. 

The drizzle had settled in properly not proper rain mind you, just that miserable floating wetness that seeps into your cuffs, your sandwich bag and eventually your very soul. The sort of weather that makes moorhens look annoyed at life. Still, there I was, wobbling down the towpath after work with all the optimism of a man who has learned absolutely nothing from previous sessions.

Now canal zander are funny creatures. Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha. One day you’d swear there were more zander than actual water in the canal. You could lower a lure in and practically bounce it off their foreheads. They’d be stacked up in the margins like stripy little nightclub bouncers waiting for trouble.

Then two days later?

Nothing.

Not a knock. Not a swirl. Not even the courtesy of a missed take. You start questioning whether fish ever existed in the first place or whether you’ve imagined the entire species after eating dodgy service station Cornish pasties. That’s the thing with canal zander. They’re transient. Wandering hooligans. Aquatic gypsies with bad attitudes and excellent eyesight. One minute they’re terrorising a stretch like tiny underwater gangsters and the next they’ve vanished entirely, probably halfway to Coventry chasing romance and roach fry.

And romance, I suspect, is usually to blame.

Because if there’s one thing more unpredictable than a male zander, it’s a female zander in breeding condition. The males follow them about with all the dignity of pub blokes outside a kebab shop at midnight. I imagine the big female zander leading them around the canal like some spikey dorsal-finned pied piper in a greyhound skirt, with half a dozen lovestruck males wobbling after her through the coloured water.

No wonder you can’t locate the beggars.

One minute your hotspot is alive with fish. The next it’s emptier than a politician’s promise.

This late afternoons trip was at least more convenient than last week’s expedition into deepest Warwickshire misery. Tonight’s chosen stretch sat only a few miles from home and crucially on the route back from work, meaning I could disappoint myself far more efficiently than usual. The hotspot itself is one of those classic canal areas that always looks fishy. Bit of depth. Bit of cover. Slightly murky water with enough shopping trolley architecture beneath the surface to shelter a medium-sized submarine. The kind of place where you fully expect either a double-figure zander or a stolen bicycle to grab your lure.

Hit and miss, mind.

Mostly miss.

But when they’re there, they are THERE.

I’ve seen sessions on this stretch where the canal seemed positively possessed. Zander slashing through fry. Perch scattering like panicked confetti. Tiny fish spraying out the water as though being pursued by underwater tax inspectors. Then other nights it resembles a decorative drainage feature outside an industrial estate.

Still, that’s canal fishing.

If certainty is what you want, buy a goldfish, so anyway, how did it go ?

The tow had a nasty pull on it from the off, the sort that drags hope downstream quicker than a forgotten landing net. Still, after spending half the day dodging showers and squinting at weather apps like a man trying to decipher ancient runes, I eventually hot-footed it to the cut with dreams of a canal zander rattling about in the old loaf. 

One rod carried a smelt, the other a modest little roach, and both looked full of promise beneath a stretch illuminated by a watery burst of sunshine. Trouble was, the canal itself resembled builder’s tea after a hard stir, heavily coloured and pushing through with enough tow to make presentation awkward at best. Add in the usual wind tunnelling down the cut and it became one of those sessions more about persistence than pleasure.

I leapfrogged several likely looking areas, with overdepth float rigs tight to cover and dropping baits where any self-respecting predator ought to have been sulking. 

Not a tremble. Not a flicker. The kind of silence that has you checking whether you’ve accidentally forgotten the hooks entirely. Yet anglers are funny creatures; we endure conditions sensible folk would avoid simply because somewhere deep down we need that fix of uncertainty and anticipation, even when the odds look about as favourable as dry socks in November.

In the end the answer came not from pressing onward, but from retracing old footsteps. I dropped back to an overhanging tangle (the banker) that had looked fishy from the start and slipped the smelt beneath the cover .Five minutes later the float jabbed and a spirited little schoolie tried burying itself straight into the thick stuff. Thankfully it was stopped in its tracks before matters became too agricultural, and after a brief but satisfying tussle the blank was avoided. 

With black clouds rolling in like unpaid bills and the first hints of fresh rain on the wind, discretion won the day. One fish, a damp walk home, and chaos waiting on the other side of the front door.