Zedvember the 53rd

Three years ago today I organised an event on the canals round my way using the excuse of my 50th birthday to pry anglers out the door on a freezing night to try their best to catch zander. To my surprise a dozen local zed heads turned out for what turned out be a dire evening's fishing but a memorable social and so this year on Danny Everitt's recommendation that I should, I decided to hold it again.

'Zedvember the 53rd' was a long way off when I first attempted to get in touch with all the anglers I've met in the last eight years. But I was crapping myself the whole of the prior week with weather predictions forecasting Sunday 23rd — the day I'd thought best — as the worst possible day I could have chosen in the entire month!

It's a long way to go for the uncertain prospect of wild zander averaging only a couple of pounds from a drab wintertime canal I wouldn't venture round the corner to fish during this sort of weather, but, sarf Londoners, Brian Roberts, brothers James and Richard Denison, braved it. I don't think they ever did worry, but I needn't have. Rain before seven and all that. By ten it was easing and by half past when I met with Brian at Coventry Station, it had stopped altogether.

Walking the 5.5733 miles to the venue at Hawkesbury Junction, Norm, who was to cut his first zander tooth today, phoned as we hoofed along the gin clear canal at Electric Wharf in the City. Exiting from the first road bridge and taking the short cut up the Foleshill Road passing through the bustling main thoroughfare of Coventry's Asian quarter, we were amazed to find him accosting us from behind... He'd got his missus to drive him back down to town and had run all the way up the road through the crowds and vegetable stalls to catch up, rod in hand!

After a swift pint at the Greyhound moorings where we met up with the rest of the crew, we were off. Danny and Keith Jobling joined by Joe Chatterton went on a northern excursion into the semi-rural stretches of the Bedworth bound Coventry Canal, while Mick Newey ventured eastwards and alone to the Oxford Canal and one of my regular swims, Grassy Bend. All the rest of us pitched up in and around the mouth of Exhall Marina.

For all, but especially those up from the The Smoke, I really hoped that the fishing would be the kind that happens often enough here — you know, run after run after run.  But it seemed clear it wasn't going to happen that way. For an agonising half-hour — nothing. Then (thank the Lord!) Brian's float was off, he struck, and was attached to the thrash and flurry of a respectable zander. Phew! 

Next cast back to the very same spot of water he had a fingerling too. But no one else got a bite either side so after an hour or so we all moved along. Passing the four others along on the way, Danny had had three small ones by way of his live worm drop shot method, Mick had lost a fish on the Oxford Canal before moving back to the Coventry, Joe had yet to get a bite, ditto Keith. Biteless likewise, I was bound for one of my recent discoveries, just to see if on such a tough day it would throw me another bone...

Anglers to the left of me. Richard and Brian

I've written once before about this particular bush. In the meantime I've fished it again and with result. One bait cast into just a square yard of water beneath it, the second cast here, there, and everywhere nearby, the first has scored over and over again while the second has gone utterly ignored except for a few odd dibs and dobs that never developed into proper runs. Also, the stamp caught has been encouragingly high with every fish between three and four pounds set against a general canal average of two to two and a half pounds. But today I fished just the one rod. There were plenty enough others fishing nearby to ascertain if this entire area was indeed a hotspot or just one remarkable yard of it. 

Anglers to the right.  Norm beside me, James chatting with Mick in the background

The bait was put out and within two minutes the float was vanishing under cover. Fish on! Not a bad one either. Everyone including myself thought it a five pounder but it weren't. Dead on four pounds. Zander — deceptive creatures with more air in them than you'd think. 

The bait is already back in the magic square and I'm watching the float hoping for a brace shot!

Norm just to my right hand side was casting his bait no further than a few yards from mine but was getting strange bites. I have never had such bites myself — and yet he was using one of my rigs so our set ups were identical. The float was burying slowly but not running as it should. Then Brian had a bite under the near bank that was a most curious one too. Neither hooked up. We suspected crayfish and when Brian slowly lifted his rig on the next bite, sure enough there was a Reggie hanging on.

One  caught last year...

Apart from these unwelcome guests, no one either side had even a touch from zander, which was disappointing because I really wanted Norm to catch his first ever and James to break his Coventry Canal duck too. When night fell we returned to the vicinity of the pub where Richard had a zed from beneath the footbridge and we met with Martin Roberts (who is in no conceivable way brother to Brian!) out for a social.

The fishing didn't last long after that and so it was off to the pub where the beer flowed mostly into my thirty gob being birthday boy, n'all.

My heartfelt thanks to those who attended and I do hope you really enjoyed yourself. I certainly did, and that's because of you and your willingness to leave Sunday lunch behind, come fish alongside me, and lay no blame for the lack of bites or the bloody signals...

Cheers,

Jeff

Canal Zander — Nuff Said

You learn something about zander every time you fish for them. Most of the time what you'll learn, and it's a lesson you'll repeat over and over again, is how little you really know! Take the other night, for instance. Danny and myself went out night fishing at a new spot on the Coventry Canal some way out in the sticks. We set up a zander rod each and a quiver tip rod for the chub we'd heard could be caught around those parts. On arrival there was a flotilla of boats moored along the towpath and so we were forced to fish the gap between two sterns. Almost as soon as we cast out both started their engines to charge batteries for the evening's telly sessions. It was noisy, and soon we were enveloped in diesel fumes and so it was doubly unpleasant.

However, Danny's chub rod brought in a really good looking roach x bream hybrid within minutes and then his zander float was off too and the first zed of the night was banked. He was off to a flyer but only when I brought my zander bait from its distant position right into the vibration zone did I get a run.  And then I had another, and another, and another. Then Danny had another as well. So we'd banked five zander so far, I'd lost a very small one, an hour had passed by, but it really looked as if we'd be at it all night long. And then both boaters decided to watch the goggle box, switched off their engines, and it fell silent.

We didn't get another bite between us the rest of the session but at least we could breath and hear each other talk...

When I got home I found I had itchy feet, wasn't sleepy at all, and wanted to get back out just to see if the cessation of feeding was a matter of us catching all members of a pack, imminent changes in weather and barometric pressure, or lack of vibration! I went back out at two in the morning to fish the junction just around the corner from home with a cup of coffee in hand, where I enjoyed washing down a couple of pork pies whilst watching two static floats do nothing at all till the clock struck four when the predicted heavy rain began to fall.

Next day I went out again just to see if daylight would have improved matters...

Nothing doing in my 'barometer swim' where there's always fish present doing away with the doubt that I'm not on fish in the first place. Second swim used to be a banker but it seems it isn't these days. I did enjoy the very rare instance of a pike though. Thinking my line was too near a submerged snag, I moved it, and he snatched up the bait.

But rare? Pike?

I've lost count of pike the local zed anglers have not caught. They are about, but about as uncommon as the proverbial. You'll get one in every hundred zander. Oddly enough, Danny had had one just the other day. Now I'd had another. And, I'm just hearing first reports of a 25 pounder caught within peddling distance — a sixteen-pounder viewed through the distorting lens provided by lager and lack of a spring balance, most likely...

But you never know!

Because this very long canal pound certainly does contain well documented and accurately weighed pike above thirty pounds and probably a few exceeding forty I tend to err on the side of caution about the veracity of stated weights but there's no smoke without fire and locations are always accurate enough so I will follow such rumours up because when large pike are ever found, they're likely to be found lurking around the perimeter bounds of large shoals of large bream and there'll be more than one present.

Juggling a 'five pounder'.  A lively and slippery bugger this! 

On the subject of subjective weight estimates. I moved out into the countryside to the bream shoal in question (about forty strong. I saw them in January 2011 swimming just an inch below thawing ice) where I had my only zander of the day. It wasn't weighed but was a mid two-pounder, maybe scraping three-quarters. Catching so many in this size bracket I can weight them by eye and be only ounces out. A couple of local boaters who live on the cut the whole year round passed by as I netted the fish and proclaimed it a 'good un' and 'easily a five!'

Nuff said.

A couple of lads fishing four rods between them had two zander that day between 9am and 5pm. That's not so good for such a long session but given my own results, I suppose OK on the day. They reported losing way too many over the last few sessions, though. I enquired about their hooks and sure enough they had been using trebles. I recommended them Danny's hook choice because they wouldn't be able to get hold of mine and it works every bit as well.

Thankfully, the Gamakatsu 'wide gap' pattern seems to be back on course with every run hooked cleanly, and only one fish lost out of seven since that weird session by the bush a fortnight ago. I'm going to trial circle hooks next. I don't actually expect them to work well for zander and for specific reasons to do with gapes and jaw bone peculiarities, but we'll see.

Canal Zander — Push, Push...

Intending to drop into the Marina swim for an hour and then go exploring neglected places I found two fellas already fishing six rods between them there and with so much hardware out almost all options covered. Nevertheless, I dropped in at a respectful distance to their right hand side just to observe what they might catch in what has to be the most easily accessible and comfortable swim I know of on the entire Coventry Canal. I only go there for the inevitable chinwag with passers by and their 100% reliable but 20% accurate local fishing reports. And that it does give up a run or two when everywhere fails...

They hadn't caught in their first hour. They were fishing live baits and they looked like imported rudd to me (tut, tut...) what with their scarlet fins. Anyhow, they didn't seem to be working. I think dead baits were out too, but neither did they. Two hours after my arrival on the scene they still hadn't had a run between them and neither had I, but then my right hand float moved decisively towards the far bank, where it stopped, as they often do. I expected it to move again when I'd strike. But it didn't, so I waited and waited and waited again, finally deciding I'd experienced what I never had before. The dropped run of zander fishing lore and legend.

How peculiar. They were playing up all fickle and fussy this morning!

Deciding that the day really was all wrong for zeds, as it often is, that I'd probably blank by staying put and I'd nothing much to lose by an excursion out into the sticks, I upped mine and went. I chose a spot where I could leapfrog the rods up and down against a continuous run of far bank cover in the form of hawthorn bushes and partially sunken tree branches. Casting here and there and by moving about constantly I finally found a spot that held at least one fish because I had a run there.

There was absolutely nothing at all unusual about it — just a bush, and an ordinary one at that.  But, over the next hour and a half I had seven runs and banked three fish around the three to four pound mark from a spot no larger than a square yard beneath it whilst the second float, no matter where I put it, stayed stock still and any cast of the first rod that did not land plumb in that square yard went ignored.

What was also odd was that none of the banked fish were hooked very securely and four runs were bumped after hooking. Dropped runs, bumped fish. That's what other anglers experience. Not me! Ah well, pride before a fall and all that. After my last post when I thought it almost certain that the Gamakatsu 'Finessse Wide Gap' might well be my future hook of choice, now I was not so sure about them and wished I had a packet of my trusty 'Ultimate Bass' to hand.



Eventually the bites dried up when I reckon I'd caught all three residents of that particular lair and so I went home quite chuffed to have found another good and probably reliable spot for the future but a little bemused by such unusual results.

Canal Zander — We Don't Think So!

I enjoyed a long conversation about zander the other morning with Danny Everitt while we fished the Coventry Canal just round the corner from my home. Now, Danny and myself are pretty experienced at the canal zander fishing malarky and though we have never fished using the same rigs in all the time we've practised the sport, we've somehow converged over time and arrived at the point where what we both have dangling from our rod tops is superficially different but technically speaking pretty much identical in every respect. Small but buoyant cigar shaped floats — because there's no need for big ones when the bait is just yards distant — enough weight to cock them, and a wire trace armed with a large single hook.

The approach we use is similar too. No need for rod rests and all that. We sit out back with our rods lain on the strip of grass between towpath and water, often at a forty-five degree angle in tight swims, with their butts out of the way of Robocyclist, who we see from time to time as a silver/black/spandex/carbon-fibre blur, hurtling through the gap against his handlebar mounted iPhone stopwatch. Each to his own. He has his hobby, we have ours. It's for the best they're kept apart by a few inches. Also, the gear we carry about is pared down to the barest minimum. A seat, a bag, and a net, is all we have besides our rods. Canal zander fishing is not a static pursuit and moving along, and you might five or six times over in the one session, is far easier when you aren't entrenched in a mess of unnecessary tackle.

The only difference between Danny's current practise and my own is in bait choice. I use small slices of dead roach, he uses small live perch. But the emphasis is still on small bait size and for good reason.

Wrong hook — fifteen runs — two fish banked.  No wonder zander are thought a tricky customer...

Now, we've both experimented with hooks down the years, starting off with tandem trebles,  progressing through every conceivable combination of this and that before arriving at the same conclusion — that single hooks in sizes so agricultural they'd make the average coarse angler's eyes water, are the very best tool for the job. You have to understand that using the wrong hook for zander results in head-banging frustration with run after run missed and lightly pricked fish getting off far too easily. When you only net one fish from every three hooked and hook just six from fifteen runs in one hectic hour (as I did one December night back in 2010) then you become acutely aware that something is very wrong at the business end.

The Gamakatsu 'Finessse Wide Gape' in size 3/0

Last time I fished with Danny after zeds he was using O'Shaughnessy hooks size 1/0 and I was using the Mustad 'Ultimate Bass' in size 2/0. Today he was using a carp hook, and it was the biggest one he could find on the shelves, while I was using a hook under trial as an alternative to the Mustad — the Gamakatsu 'Finesse Wide Gap'. This is a hook only available in America and was kindly thrown across the pond by Steve Dedrick (Steve in Colorado) on recommendation as a great hook for walleye and therefore the closely related zander. 

Apart from the straight point of mine and the in-curved point of Danny's, they were, to all intents and purposes, identical. And just as large as each other even though his was a size 1 and mine a 3/0 according to the packets!

General hook size chart.  Perhaps my 3/0 is not nearly big enough for double figure fish?

We agreed. They weren't that large at all. Not in the jaw of a decent zander, but certainly not in the gob of any size of pike. What was 'large' about them was only that they were in use for coarse fish. We then agreed on a second point — that many coarse anglers lack sea fishing experience and have therefore developed something of a fetish for small hooks and are always looking at ways to reduce size. Which, as we also agreed, is a nonsense. Hooks should be the right size for the job, big or small, and these huge hooks of ours were spot on. 

For bass in this size range sea anglers routinely choose hook sizes in the order of  4/0 - 6/0

That's a great deal larger than a size 6! 

About ten times the size...

Use such a hook at Bury Hill, though, and you'd be frogmarched out the gates by the owner. Trebles are banned outright there and single hooks a must. But he enforces tench hooks on his predator hunters. Size 6 is the maximum allowed. Because Bury Hill is the country's zander Mecca, this ruling has forced intelligent anglers who fish the place to refine small hook/small bait rigs to get the best from it. However, using such small hooks results in false data. You are going to get very many 'dropped' runs and many lost fish before you bank one. The upshot of this is the reinforcement of an old myth originally perpetuated by pike anglers fishing for zander with pike gear. And that is...

That they are 'finicky'.

A size 6 circle and a strip of trout. Looks all wrong
but what is the essential difference between this
and a single maggot on a size 18?

We don't think so! 

Danny doesn't have dropped runs and neither do I. They just don't let go of a bait once they pick it up, in my experience. When I caught a one at Bury Hill, it messed with the bait for a full minute before deciding to move off with it. The float dithered on the spot, but it didn't run. I knew it must be zander picking it up because the bite was typical of many I get down the cut and such bites must be struck when the float moves away in one direction (no matter how slowly) because the fish is solo, not in a competitive pack, and is mouthing the bait, not eating it beforehand. Sure enough, when it did move off, I struck against the direction of the run and hooked it. It was a near twelve-pounder, but I would have never had hooked it at all if I'd struck early.

I was very lucky to bank it though. Very lucky not to be thrown off too, because I used a size 6 circle hook that day. At least that's what it said on the packet...

The reason such large hooks as we both currently employ work so very well mechanically is because the gape is very wide. The reason the bait is hooked so that it dangles off the bend rather than being impaled upon on it, is that the gape must not be clogged with flesh otherwise it is rendered ineffectual because it is the bend of the hook that banks zander, not the point. That wide unimpeded gape is critical because there's the bony plate of the upper jaw to contend with and it must wrap around it. Use anything smaller and you are merely hoping to hook up by finding some little bit of flesh inside the mouth and there's precious little of that, hence the reputation zander have for falling off. 

The Gamakatsu and its typical hook hold.  Zander should always be hooked like this so far 
as I'm concerned because if not it's the wrong hook for the job in a very bony gob. 

The Gamakatsu is almost as wide as it is long — nearly a circle hook but for the lack of a sharply inturned point. Fish are almost always hooked cleanly in the scissors through the thin membrane between the bony plate of the upper jaw and the skull but for some reason are never hooked down the throat and that's a blessing because unhooking the fish is a formality, not a surgical operation. Big wide gape hooks avoid all that, in fact I'm so outrageously confident in them that I don't even check my bag for forceps before I go. Can't remember when I last had to use them, actually.

The Mustad 'Ultimate Bass' cleanly hooked through the scissors of a small zander. 

But even with the long-shanked Mustad, it is the large gape that makes it work so well. I refer you to Mick Newey, who was having a horrible time of it when he began trying for the zander in his local canal. He was experiencing exactly what Danny and I had encountered years ago. Lots of runs, few fish. I recommended the Mustad bass hook and what happened then was he hooked and banked almost every single one thereafter. He didn't catch any large ones though, so the hook looks enormous in their mouths, but hook a five-pounder or better and that size discrepancy vanishes, and five-pounds plus is what we fish for, after all, is it not?

The only downside we agreed upon was that such large hooks might once in a while impale small zander through the orbit of the eye.

Well, little zander make for a very tasty fillet, don't they?