Closed Season Zander Quest Pt.1 - The Oppidan Invader

After returning from sunnier climes the first session of my closed season double figure canal Zander challenge I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy task, 15 or so miles of canal to explore and not one inch of the towpath I’d trodden. In less than ten minutes drive I could rock up at a certain banker swim I know very well, whack out a headless Roach and within an hour have a few fish on the bank. Out of the countless I’ve caught at the banker swim and other swims in throwing distance the biggest only went 3lb, I don’t want schoolies I want their parents. For me it’s very much unchartered I’m expecting to blank more often than not, they ain’t that easy these Zander, especially when targeting the bigger ones.

My PB canal Zander of 5lb 4oz was lure caught so for the first few sessions I plan to use a two rod approach, a light lure rod donned with a highly successful fire tiger coloured lure and then a float set-up with a headless Roach as a highly visible sleeper rod. I aimed to try and cover up to a mile or so in each session, and then suss out the areas where in the future I’d target specifically with deadbaits. I use Roach exclusively, and to be honest condition doesn’t really matter. You would think they would prefer a fresh bait but manky ones that have been frozen and defrosted repeatedly work just as well. They are voracious feeders, they don’t mess about.

The tried and tested Jeff Hatt recommended Mustad ultimate bass 2/0 hooks (with the barb flattened) would feature in the float and running deadbait set-ups. I’ve such confidence in the pattern I couldn’t really think of using anything else, they transformed my hook-ups and believe you me using other hooks really did lead to frustration with many a fish managing to lose or shake the hook. The fish banked rate went from 1 in 7 landed to 6 out of 7.

A 5 hour weekend session and a one evening in the week would mean plenty of hour’s banktime, for me as a multi species angler, a carpet bombing approach is a bit alien to me if I’m honest, but it’s an incongruous fish, and needs a bit more dedication from my usual dabble here and there. It’s a mobile pursuit targeting canal Zander so travel as light as possible. I have a folding landing net, two rods, and a small shoulder bag . In my experience apart from the problem of finding the fish, there doesn’t seem to be a pattern in their feeding. First and last light is a good time but then I’ve had them feeding in short spells in bright sunlight in the middle of the day.

So how big do these canal fish go, well amongst the many ridiculous made up weights, over estimations , forgotten scales and ridiculous arms out small head big fish pictures , doubles certainly do exist I’ve no doubt about that but I would suggest needle in a haystack stuff. As the local midland bloggers have discovered you could spend literally hundreds of hours for a half decent 5lber and then someone could rock up at a swim put a bait in the right place, at the right time you could catch an elusive double, a lifetime capture if there ever was one. Sadly time doesn’t equal success in this game.

The first session just over a mile, I managed to find some Zander and despite it being bright and sunny I managed 6 fish from 4 different swims, nothing huge sadly, the biggest was a nadger under 2lb and took a liking to a deadbait as I was playing a fish on the lure. 6 fish caught with 5 on deadbait (all runs landed) and 1 on the lure. I’m looking forward to the next session.

An end of season Barbel...

So the closed season is upon us again, I didn't have a great one to be honest but managed to get out every weekend and caught some nice fish. I had planned to fish the float down the 'Brook' but with heavy rain the day before the river was up and coloured so I decided to stay in one swim and fish a couple of rods with pellet as bait. Much fresher than I thought with a bitterly cold wind, not exactly pleasant.

In the first hour I had a couple of Chub and then the swim went dead. I had a whacker of a bite that much have been another Chub but eventually I had the classic four foot twitch and I was playing a Barbel. A powerful fight in the flow but eventually in the net. I didn't weigh it but it was something like 5 or 6 lb. Most welcome though.

So the double figure canal Zander challenge is here and I'm looking forward to it. When I get a chance to get to the cut that is, holiday and Fatherly duties are getting in the way. I'm now a lure anglers canal club member so I can fish from Hatton Bottom Lock all the way through to Stockton, approximately 12 miles of canal to try and search out an elusive double figure fish (They are there somewhere and I've been given a couple of leads). I'm planning to use a lure rod to find some fish then exclusively fish deadbaits. I'm hoping a few nice Perch might get in the way.

Zander come with a bit of a reputation, and often disliked. I personally love them as a species and for us lucky Midlanders well worth a go in the closed season. As the evenings are getting lighter I'm also going to use my Chinese toxic float set-up :) , it's geared up for an isotope and I've never float fished for them before, even though I've done pretty well catching plenty of Zander I think I've been missing a trick.

Warwickshire Avon - The Redfin of Brobdingnagian Proportions.

My often unfathomable and idiosyncratic dreams full of fright, fantasy and funbags (usually the result of too much port and stilton) was pleasantly replaced with a chimera of cyprinidae, it featured a redfin capture of Brobdingnagian proportions from a swim I knew very well. The flashback in the morning was so strong in my subconsciousness I ditched the barbel session entirely, codged together a suitable roach set-up and buggered off to an entirely different area of the river around 5 miles away. Before I left the house to go on my mission the Wife said maybe I should professional seek help, not the first time I’ve been told that but hey, if there is a sense of reality, there must be a sense of possibility. As an angler and mediocre specimen fish seeker, there’s no room for pessimism.

She clearly didn’t understand the dilemma I was in……….

Prior to this session, all I’d caught from this Warwickshire Avon swim were the vulgus, not one would have given a half decent Zander a belly ache, more of an irritation, a mere toothpick. The barbel could wait for another week, I just had to give it a go, I’d only kick myself and become irritable if I didn’t. Success is often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable. It’s a relatively short stretch that’s chock -full of Roach, either side more barren than a barren thing, they don’t seem to like to venture far these fish. From a couple of previous trips bites were so frequent the use of two quiver rods was out of the question

Sadly the probability of catching anything other than the norm was low, the story of my piscatorial life……….

The main set-up was simple my 11ft avon quiver rod, a cage feeder filled with liquidised bread and maggot to provide a nice scent trail. Hookbait was worm or a bread disc. I’ve found large dendrobaenas fantastic for Roach, with the worm secured on a size 14 wide gape Kamasan B983 the majority of bites resulted in a banked fish. Weirdly the Roach don’t tend to be so keen on the smaller worms maybe they are less visible and not as enticing as a bigger wriggler who knows. But bigger the better as worms go. So to try and single out the bigger roach with bigger mouths I ditched the dendrobaenas for lobworms and switched to a size 10.

It sure ain’t cricket……….

With lobs I tend to hook them through the saddle and then break the worm at that point, you get double the usage that way but it also releases the juices the fish seem to love. A lob worm head or tail if you will. The folded bread discs to be used were the size of a 2 quid coin , I’ve had Roach well over a pound on the local reservoir using baits this size (before I started to properly weigh them ), so no reason to change for this session. To try and avoid spooking the more weary fish I used a 1m hooklink of super low diameter reflo power line with a shot added an inch from the hook to sink the bread.

The Roach were still there when the rig first settled, again nothing of size sadly but at least I was catching. After the 5th or 6th fish the swim went quiet and lo and behold a tentative bite and a fish was hugging bottom this was no Roach. Yeap, a greedy Jack Pike that I managed to land as it was hooked in the scissors. I started catching Roach again and the biggest went 10oz.

Using bigger pieces of worm, bites were often missed, probably something like 1 in 5 resulted in a banked fish. So where was this massive Roach then, ? nowhere to be seen. It didn’t help that I had to cut the session early too as a flu fever took over and hot sweats changed to my entire body covered in goose bumps. I was rough the rest of the weekend. With the closed season here with us next week, it will have to wait for another day. I returned through the woods and again took a load of dumped angler’s rubbish hanging from tree home, discarded rubbish today was a load of cheap Polish beer cans and tins of sweetcorn, in a Lanes carrier bag. I despair.