Catching Some ZZZ's Jason Skilton

Zander (Sander lucioperca) are a species of fish that I have never encountered in my neck of the woods. Even with my trips on the Broads system and the rumours of zander being present there I have not been fortunate enough to come across this strange looking fish. So it was with great delight that I accepted an invitation to fish for them with Mark Philips. I’d hooked up with Mark via the Pike Pit. The plan was to be a trip to the Fens.

We had arranged to fish an afternoon/evening session on a river, as we felt this period of the day would offer us the best opportunity of finding one of these night time hunters. And would hopefully mean less chance of being pestered by the jack pike that are prolific in the river. I was advised to bring along fresh bait, so I had a quantity of fresh roach, rudd and skimmer bream in the cooler box; along with some lamprey.

I packed my tackle into the car and began the hour and a half journey to the fens. It was interesting to see the change from wheeled tractors to caterpillar tracked tractors working on the fields next to the road as I entered the Fenland area.

Mark and I had arranged to meet at a local pub, so as I had arrived early, (I drove a bit quick) I sneaked a quick half pint to settle the nervous excitement of the pending adventure. Whilst sipping the beer and looking over the river I was soon joined by a gent who enquired about my intended quarry. We engaged in a conversation and it soon became apparent that as a keen boater he had spied a couple of anglers landing a small zander only a couple of hour before. He didn’t know it was a zander at the time, but did describe it as a weird looking perch.

Mark turned up on cue and after a chat and a look along the stretch of the river near the pub, I followed him to his chosen swims. We parked up and walked up the steep bank leading to the river, after we have negotiated the newly installed sheep proof barbed wire fence. The river was running slow and was clear, not the best zander conditions I’m led to believe, so Mark was hopeful that any boating traffic might churn up the bottom and muddy the water. I was kindly given the prime swim on the inside of the bend and was soon setting up my two rods. My two rigs were standard pike rigs, but with smaller hooks size 8 on the AFW trace wire which is softer than the normal trace material I use for pike. The first rod was a running leger, baited with lamprey, and fished against the far bank and the second set up with a paternoster and baited with a 5 inch roach on the near bank marginal shelf -where the cabbage was dying off. Despite being fished close in the river was still a good 12ft deep, so the bait was present 5ft off the bottom.

In the crystal clear water vast shoals of year class roach and bream could be seen seeking shelter in the marginal reeds away from the open water predators. A single great crested grebe was diving frequently in the open water and its bow wave could be seen as it was chasing the fry just below the surface. It reminded me of pike chasing surface lures. The grebe came up more often than not with a small fish in its bill, so there were obviously plenty of bait fish in the water in front of us. Mark positioned both of his baits in the centre channel of the river where there was a good depth.

As the evening drew in and darkness surrounded us the sunset gave way to a clear sky and brought about a star studded night. Not being an astronomer I could not tell you which stars were which, but I can say that apart form in the Egyptian desert I have never seen as many stars so clearly as I did that night.

At 7:30pm, just when I was considering freshening up the baits, the rod baited with the roach was away and the BBB alarm was sounding. I tightened up and felt the 3oz lead lift off the bottom and I felt a fish on the end. Not a big fish, but a fish. It soon became apparent that it was not our chosen quarry, but a small jack that had snaffled the bait. This was soon netted, unhooked and returned back to chase the fry in the margins. It has to be noted that even though I was on top of the rods and was into the fish in seconds it had snaffled the bait and it was hooked in the bottom of its mouth. A fresh bait was mounted on the hooks, this time I went for a larger 6” roach and it was swung back out into the margins.

Luckily the night was not too cold and all we needed were hoodies and fleeces to keep out the night time chill. I had been pre warned that nights on the river can get cold, so additional layers were on hand, but tonight it was still and pleasantly warm for late September.
At 9pm, with discussion in full steam about all manner of topics, the lamprey rod’s alarm sounded although the spool in bait runner mode was not spinning. Mark suggested I feel for the fish. This I did and I could feel the lead in the mud, but with a bit of pressure it soon dislodged. There was no fish attached. The drop off was re-attached and the alarm armed again. We both then grabbed a hot drink and settled back resuming our conversation. During this chatter it became apparent that both of us were fishing Abberton in the early 90’s and we discussed our experiences and captures from the dam wall of this vast water.

We had agreed to say until 11pm as both of us had an hour plus dive to our respective homes and partners. The wind had started to pick up and river now carried an inviting surface ripple. The air temperature was dropping too, and the warmth had gone from the night. My hands were starting to feel chilled so yet another hot drink was consumed

.At 11:15pm, just as my hopes of any further activity were waning, the second rod’s alarm screamed out. I turned on my head torch on and silenced the alarm. Again the spool remained stationary and there was no sound from the baitrunner. For a split second I felt that a fish had dropped the bait but then the baitrunner gave a tantalising single audible click, followed closely by a second and third. In what felt like a life time the bait runner began to sound and the spool picked up pace. I tightened into a definite fish. The beauty of my paternoster rigs is that you connect to the fish and the lead is left free running. So I could instantly feel the fish moving off into the centre of the river. A short fight ensued with the fish staying deep and Mark asked me if it felt like a zander. God knows I thought, I’ve never caught one before!

Soon, my head torch beam cut through the clear water and caught the gleaming pearly coloured eye of a zander. With my heart pounding and the fish thrashing angrily in the margins Mark netted her for me and we shone our torches onto my first zander. I must confess to just gazing on this magical fish and running my hand on her flank to feel the texture of skin in sheer admiration. She raised her spiky dorsal for a moment in a last ditch show of defiance and I could see that those spines could cause serious pain if mishandled. Mark showed me the strength of the jaws and I could clearly see how this type of predator caught its prey by disabling it with repeated attacks rather than engulfing its victim. She had a number of battle scars along each flank and had clearly been attacked on more than one occasion, but had survived the attacks and healed well. The hooks had fallen out in the net, and as she was clearly not a double figure fish. I asked Mark to estimated her weight rather than put her in a weigh sling. He estimated her at between seven and eight pounds
Mark quickly got his camera setup to take some shots of her before we slipped her back into the river.

We stayed well beyond our finish time of 11pm in an effort to bag a second zander, but nothing was forthcoming. We then said our goodbyes and I thanked Mark for his time, his generosity and the benefit of his knowledge of this river system. I’m hoping we can fish together again in the future, because Mark is certainly good company to be in. Cheers Mark. You did me proud!

Give The Pike A Pasting Chris Hammond

Like many other pikers I’ve been experimenting with flavoured baits, on and off, for some time now. The majority of the flavourings I’ve used in the past have been, unsurprisingly, typically oil-based. I have to confess to harbouring a degree of scepticism though regarding the principle of oil-based flavourings. I’m sure the various fishy scents carried in these products will have an appeal to pike, what concerns me however is the effectiveness of these oil ‘hosts’ in carrying that scent, or taste, through the water to the pike.

Without meaning to state the blindingly obvious, it goes without saying that oil floats on water. Any oil leaving a submerged dead-bait should, and indeed does, float fairly quickly to the surface. Now I’m willing to concede that in a small number of situations, probably in deep-water in particular, this could be beneficial. On a flowing river I have to say this scenario does little to inspire my confidence.

I sometimes wonder if, in the majority of situations, injecting our baits with oils does little more than make it easier to remember where the bait landed! Having said that though I have to confess to using them still occasionally on the basis that, at the very worst, they don’t put the pike off. Perhaps some element of the inherent fish scent is separated from the rising oil and carried through the water to the predators Certainly I know other anglers that swear by oils.

There's one of those age old myths in pike fishing that states that pike won't feed in heavily coloured water. I say 'myth' because that's what I firmly believe the idea to be. When I first began to target pike seriously I had read little about the species, and in all honesty I just never realised that we 'couldn't' catch pike in coloured water. When my local rivers suffered a deluge of rain and turned the colour of cocoa, or the local drains were pumping, I simply carried on fishing in blind ignorance. That proved to be a lucky break for me because, being an angler that most often found himself using dead-baits, I kept on catching. The old adage, ' A little knowledge is dangerous' springs to mind. as is often the case it pays to find things out for yourself.

Flavoured baits of course really come into their own in turbid water conditions. In these conditions, particularly on a flooded or fining down river, I’m expecting the pike, generally, to be on, or close to the bottom. If the rivers been in flood or coloured up for a day or two they’ll often be lying ‘doggo’, usually carrying a few lice on their bellies as proof.

Feeding pike can initially be difficult to find in the first day or so of a major change in colour, but once they've become accustomed to the conditions they will begin to feed. They aren’t always that keen to move around in search of food in heavily coloured water, so it is easy to form the impression that they aren't feeding, but on flooded rivers pike can actually be easier to locate, once you have a background knowledge of the holding areas. There are often only so many suitable places for the pike to hold up when the river is in spate, so you can be pretty confident that they’re ‘in front of you’. It may, however, require that a bait to be literally ‘dropped on their heads’ to invoke some action.

In situations like these the pike are more likely to be intent on trapping rather than actively hunting their prey. The low visibility in coloured water limits the pike’s ability to hunt by sight to some degree. So a more viable proposition in these conditions, from their point of view, is probably to find a secure spot or shelter in which to lie in wait for their unsuspecting targets to swim past.

That of course is where the flavoured bait has its uses. Though they might not fancy a fruitless search for prey fish in low visibility, the pike can still be prepared to utilise their highly tuned sense of smell to pick up and follow the scent of carrion; a.k.a our dead-baits. Boosting this scent trail with an added flavour or extra scent increases the likelihood of a fish finding your bait.

With little faith in the efficiency of oil based flavours the obvious course of action is to use actual particles of bait as an attractant. And several anglers I know have had success with minced fish introduced via a feeder.
Swim-feeders do have their limitations though, they’re usually too small for a start and they lack the ability to carry ‘one off’ large quantities of attractant. There’s also the problem of imbalance with terminal tackle, I.e they lighten as they empty, and this can have an implication on bite detection at range, if the feeder is used as your lead.

Another way of getting a good dollop of minced fish out there close to your bait is the well documented, ‘fish lollipop’. Freezing baited traces into a lollipop mould full of minced fish creates an effective casting missile and ensures the attractant is bang on the bait. However it’s a messy tactic and again has obvious limitations. You need a reliable thermal control system of some kind for a start, and it’s really only a method for the coldest days. . It’s also difficult to do with anything other than very small baits.

A few years ago I began to experiment with using a paste as an attractant. Initial results were extremely promising and several years later the tactic still works brilliantly for me. And there aren't many of my ‘world beater’ ideas that have stood the test of time quite so impressively.

Basically I wanted to create a sticky, attractive fish paste, that would dissipate widely through the water. The paste I came up with works a treat. It is sticky enough both to enable casting, and to ensure that its release from the bait is reasonably slow, in order to keep the trail of attractant at work for longer periods. And it creates a lovely cloudy scent trail of tiny fish particles and blood.

An added attraction is that there is no possibility of feeding the pike off as with free offerings. I remember the great Eddie Turner once stating that he never threw discarded baits into the water while he was still fishing on the premise that any bait taken by a pike might be the only time that fish feeds on that day. I could see the logic of that line of reasoning, and still do. I'd rather not take the chance.

So to make the attractant:
To a couple of pounds or so of any baitfish, I add about three-quarters of a pound of liver and a tube of Anchovy paste. Obviously you can conjure up your own version and ingredients, however I can assure you this recipe works. It’s important to mince the ingredients in a blender to the finest paste possible. It pays to snip the tail and fins off the fish before mincing. I like to leave the bloody head end intact though and then check through the paste for any lumps of sinew or gristle etc afterwards.

A consistency like toothpaste is perfect. Firstly, and most importantly, this ensures the paste spreads throughout the water to its maximum capacity but it also it makes sure that not a single fragment of sinew or bone can mask a hook point The homogenised liver not only adds a bloody element to the flavour trail, but also helps to create the sticky, glutinous properties of the paste and slows down the rate at which the paste dissipates through the water.

Once blended to a fine consistency, the paste can be ‘trowelled’ over the bait with a flat blade or spatula. There’s a bit of a knack to it, but once you get the hang of it you can encase the whole bait in a reasonably even layer of the sticky attractant. For close range work the paste is durable enough to withstand the cast and nothing more needs to be done. For longer casts, or in particularly fast flowing water, I use another trick to ensure there isn’t too much paste washed off on splash down.

To make sure that all of the attractant stays intact with the bait until it has settled in the slowest, bottom layer of the water. A can of plumbers freezing spray is used and the pasted bait is given a quick blast before casting. This creates a lightly frozen crust on the surface of the paste and stabilises the whole thing nicely.

I’ve primarily used the method in river and drain fishing situations, however I have also used it on suspended, float fished baits over deep water on a few occasions; and had a few nice fish. The paste dislodges slowly and showers the water below with a fine cloudy mist of fishy particles. A twitch of the bait here and there will keep the dissolving process on the go in really still water.

It is possible with the plumbers spray ( or a rack you can hang baits on for a short period in your freezer) to paste and seal baits in cling film and then freeze them too. Use a little flavoured oil if you like to pre-grease the cling film prior to wrapping to prevent it getting too caught up in the paste.

If you want an edge this coming winter, particularly when the rains come, try the paste. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Chris Hammond