DEADS AHEAD
There are a few places that I am minded to visit in pursuit of a decent Zander. Places where we used to catch a good number on lures before the trade took lure angling to its heart and persuaded lots of people that they needed loads of dropshotting gear, to hold the rod like a pencil and dress for the flats of the Florida Keys to look cool. I've always felt that lure fishing is its own worst enemy in that every fish caught learns a lesson that cannot be overcome by giving it more food. A fish might take a maggot but eat another thousand without getting caught before its fears are allayed and it makes another mistake. There is no upside to eating a fluorescent green piece of rubber and gradually as the fishing has proved harder than the adverts suggested, many have reduced their efforts. Peace is returning to the canals and I am hoping that some of those Zander have bulked up a bit.
I visited one of those spots today. It was a lock that produced a lot of fish in the past and I thought it might be a good spot to get my eye in. I'd made some new floats to try out and refined my gear a little so I was optimistic. I have a feeling that the big Zander will be further out in the wilds as I only know of one big fish that any of my lure angling acquaintances ever caught from a lock. We caught huge numbers of small ones from such features, but even three pound fish were rare and that one eight pound fish was in a league of its own. With marina mouths being the only exception that I can think of, all the fish over five pounds that we or anybody else that I knew of, caught were away from man-made structure. Bizarrely I can think of a few that were caught close to or beneath power lines which I can only believe and hope is coincidence.
I was, as usual, there at dawn and it wasn't long before my new pencil float twitched and stood to attention. As soon as it slid away I wound into a decent resistance that soon evolved into a 3-8 Zander at the net. That was a good start but not the start of anything particularly good. That take had come when I moved the bait. I had lifted it off of the bottom and let it resettle but before I could even gather in any of the slack created, the fish was on it. The second take came immediately a recast had hit the bottom but sadly, owing to a dose of operator incompetence, it came adrift. It did however suggest that they were up in the water and on the prowl so I fished one bait off the bottom for a good while to little or no effect.
I am certain that the canals hold a considerable number, far more than people realise, of very big Pike and there seems little point in fishing deadbaits if you don't bear that in mind. My intention initially was to fish small Roach and half-Roach baits to catch the maximum number of zander but then, having found a couple of leftover Smelt in the freezer I decided to scale up the terminal tackle on one rod in an effort to test the water for pike. I had three takes today and they all came on the Smelt. I'd cut them in half because I only had two and they go a bit soft very quickly but even so it took me by surprise. I was under the impression that Zander didn't really bother with sea baits but today, although my baits were never very far apart they never even looked at the Roach.
For the future I have ordered bigger Roach and more Smelt because I feel that I have underestimated the correlation of Zander size to bait size and that there are enough 3lbs plus Zs about to not noticeably reduce the number of runs that I get. I will stick with Smelt on one rod and half a bigger Roach on the other and see what transpires while covering water further from the locks and only returning to those areas when I need a quick refresher with more runs. It will be interesting to see how that goes, hopefully better than most of my plans usually do.
I visited one of those spots today. It was a lock that produced a lot of fish in the past and I thought it might be a good spot to get my eye in. I'd made some new floats to try out and refined my gear a little so I was optimistic. I have a feeling that the big Zander will be further out in the wilds as I only know of one big fish that any of my lure angling acquaintances ever caught from a lock. We caught huge numbers of small ones from such features, but even three pound fish were rare and that one eight pound fish was in a league of its own. With marina mouths being the only exception that I can think of, all the fish over five pounds that we or anybody else that I knew of, caught were away from man-made structure. Bizarrely I can think of a few that were caught close to or beneath power lines which I can only believe and hope is coincidence.
I was, as usual, there at dawn and it wasn't long before my new pencil float twitched and stood to attention. As soon as it slid away I wound into a decent resistance that soon evolved into a 3-8 Zander at the net. That was a good start but not the start of anything particularly good. That take had come when I moved the bait. I had lifted it off of the bottom and let it resettle but before I could even gather in any of the slack created, the fish was on it. The second take came immediately a recast had hit the bottom but sadly, owing to a dose of operator incompetence, it came adrift. It did however suggest that they were up in the water and on the prowl so I fished one bait off the bottom for a good while to little or no effect.
I am certain that the canals hold a considerable number, far more than people realise, of very big Pike and there seems little point in fishing deadbaits if you don't bear that in mind. My intention initially was to fish small Roach and half-Roach baits to catch the maximum number of zander but then, having found a couple of leftover Smelt in the freezer I decided to scale up the terminal tackle on one rod in an effort to test the water for pike. I had three takes today and they all came on the Smelt. I'd cut them in half because I only had two and they go a bit soft very quickly but even so it took me by surprise. I was under the impression that Zander didn't really bother with sea baits but today, although my baits were never very far apart they never even looked at the Roach.
For the future I have ordered bigger Roach and more Smelt because I feel that I have underestimated the correlation of Zander size to bait size and that there are enough 3lbs plus Zs about to not noticeably reduce the number of runs that I get. I will stick with Smelt on one rod and half a bigger Roach on the other and see what transpires while covering water further from the locks and only returning to those areas when I need a quick refresher with more runs. It will be interesting to see how that goes, hopefully better than most of my plans usually do.
Smelt are the bait for me
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