A meander for a Zander!

I hadn’t been on the water for a couple of months over the summer, but with our newest edition to the family settled in nicely, fishing was back on the menu!

 

I decided a road trip was in order, and Zander was the target species. I headed south, to Rutland water in the midlands of the uk. It was about a 3 hour drive, so set off the night before and a had a few hours sleep before the day ahead. I met up with the guys and we all set about our business rigging our kayaks with fish finders and copious amounts of tackle for the days Fishing. 

 

Permits purchased and all signed in, we launched our kayaks and headed out of the launching bay. Within a few minutes we were fishing and within half an hour the target species was aboard the kayak. Mission accomplished. Possibly one of the smallest Zander I will ever catch but I was happy to have caught it all the same. 

 

As the day went on I had a few more fish, all falling to the Westin shad teez, nothing huge but very welcome. I had lost as many fish as I had caught! I even hooked up to a suicidal rainbow trout that gave a very good account for its self. 

 

As I had only found smaller fish on the drifts I had been fishing, I decided to move location for the last hour. The wind was picking up but my drogue was doing it’s job perfectly and I was drifting just slow enough to fish my lure vertically. 

 

I found an interesting drift on my lowrance elite TI7 unit, so I set my drogue and lowered my lure fishing vertically. I started the drift about 50 yards before the structure so that I could get the lure working properly as I approached it. As soon as I got to what looked like the ‘danger zone’ on my fish finder…BANG! A positive take from a fish and I was in, a better fish this time. Brough it up slow and steady and it was in the net. A few quick photos and a spear release back to the depths. To any one who doesn’t fish for Zander, this must look like a really odd and harmful way to release a fish but in reality it is quite the opposite. It gets the fish back down to the deeper water for recover rather than it suffer from pressure changes and not make it back. 

 

Another 30 minutes or so and we headed in and called it a day. A very enjoyable day was had. Worth the 6 hour round trip.