Zander - 'That Fateful Day'

For the Zander lovers amongst us whilst you're stuck inside trying to warm your cockles warm. THIS podcast is a good listen.

Recorded in 2011. John McAngus is the last surviving member of the team responsible for the controversial introduction of Zander to the Fens back in 1963. A time when fishery managers could do pretty much what they wanted. Here we get the full story of what he describes as 'That Fateful Day'.

My Canal PB at 5lb 4oz

I need to get back out on the bank, DIY has taken over at the minute, not good.

Well and truly gongoozled...

I was in two minds what to fish for this weekend, there is a considerable volume of water in the rivers at the minute and with unseasonably mild weather during the week there might be a chance of a Barbel. The temperatures plummeted overnight though so I felt it might have been a shock to the system and turned them off the feed.

Canal Zander was therefore the target so I went to my usual beat and intended to fish for a few hours with a headless roach on two rods and a firetiger lure fished time to time. The third retrieve of the lure I caught a small Perch but the morning was hard going.

In my relatively short canal Zander fishing bank time I've been pretty successful but one thing I've discovered is if you don't get a run on the deadbait with half an hour of it settling it's time to move. I tried 6 swims and even drove a couple of miles to my banker swim and yet the bobbin remained very much motionless. I hooked and lost a Zander on the lure rod, today wasn't my day. Maybe an evening session would have been the better option or just stuck with the Barbel.

Afterwards I went for a look at the now shut Warwick Racecourse Reservoir home to 2 of my PB's and, yeap well and truly buggered.

Drained, the fish gone and the fencing starting to be removed.

Sad really as I grew to like it and today would have been possible PB Perch beating conditions. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when the removed the fish, I bet there were some surprises.

Talking of surprises, I won the Gardner tackle competition by subscribing to their YouTube channel. I didn't realise I had not being a facebook user until Alan Stag sent me a message telling to get in touch. I lost a TLB bitealarm when fishing at Jeff Hatt's birthday bash so this will replace that and then some. Cheers Gardner Tackle.

Trotting Transmutation.

Trotting will feature more in my fishing in 2015 as I think I’ve been missing a trick. It’s not that I haven’t tried the method before, I have and I’ve had some pretty good success too with one particular session banking a load of greedy Chub that took a liking to cubes of meat. I mainly used a fairly hefty chubber float as the narrower stretches of the Avon I fish such as the brook tend to flow far faster than the main river. Because of the pace of the water on many occasions the float used to drag under far too many times for my liking, holding the float back to make the bait catch up was an exercise in itself. I was getting better at it though but needed to make some changes to help with the frustration.

I use a pin and the line thickness didn’t help as it must have caused more drag preventing the line to come of the spool in the required speed. I’ve now changed to an ultra low diameter line 6lb line the other change was to swop the chubber for a 4SSG speci waggler which I lock with a Preston jumbo shot either side of the line with a few no 6 dropper shot. I’ve no doubt a moving bait will give better presentation and I prefer to be more active when I’m fishing rather than the bait and wait approach which recently has featured far too much in my river fishing. It has its place and especially when fishing in to dusk in the summer it’s a method I will continue to use. Rolling meat has also been productive but I’ve never really gelled with it. I prefer watching a float if I'm honest.

The small changes did seem to help no end on couple of times I’ve used the new set-up as the float was flowing through far better and only a couple of times ended up being dragged under without a fish attached. I just need the water clarity to clear up a bit so I can dedicate more time to it. Hopefully before season end and the start of my canal double figure Zander challenge.