THERE CAN be fewer fish that swim in British waters, which we know so little about than the zander.

Ever since they were first introduced into our river ways the zander has had to live amidst controversy, fantasy and heresy. All the old cliches were trotted out, the kill for the sake of killing myth being the most popular, particularly in my area fenland. So has zander angling moved on from the first pioneers? Of course the answer has to be an unequivocal yes.

The first steps in catching zander were nearly all by accident. Pike anglers on the Relief Channel began to pick up the very odd fish from the first stockings. Gradually as the zander spread and the original stockies multiplied the zander became a realistic target for predator anglers.

Unfortunately the spread of the zander also coincided with a general decline in the standard of fen fishing (for baitfish). So of course the zander was labelled as the new scourge of the fens. Sensationalism throughout the media, including some sections of the angling press, aided and abetted this character assassination and so the legend was born.

So nearly 40 years on what have we learned about the zander and the best tactics to catch them?

In my opinion a hell of a lot and yet there is still so much to learn about them and for most zander anglers this is the big attraction, along with the wildness and total anticipation of the unknown.
The first major advances have been in tackle. Of course the advances in tackle in general have been huge, but the progression for zander anglers has kept apace.

Although there have been dedicated zander rods about for quite a few years no major tackle manufacturer had seen them as a viable commodity. That changed last year with the advent of the Fox zandermaster series. Whatever you may think about the actual rods themselves (and my personal opinion is that they were close to right but not quite the finished article) you have to see that the zander has stepped out of the shadows as a minority species.
Certainly any angler who has spent any time around the fens will know this to be true. Every weekend from September onwards you will see numerous anglers out and about the fen waters actively perusing zander.

Of course the advent of better clothing, bivvies, sleeping bags, bed chairs et al has helped anglers to stay out when the weather would have beaten them in years gone by. But is this the only reason. I think that there are other contributing factors.
Despite what people say I have personally experienced a groundswell against carp angling. Whatever the merits of fishing for named fish the popularity boom that carp fishing has gone through has now started to work against it. Over subscribed lakes with tens of bivvies crammed into every available space for some quickly lost its appeal.
I am lucky in this respect. I run a small carp syndicate, which has just ten anglers a year and no battles for space, but other anglers have not had this luxury.

So, disillusioned with carp angling, they have started to look elsewhere. tench, Roach, Chub and particularly barbel have all seen their popularity swell in the last ten years. Quite a lot in part to the loss of interest in carp fishing by an increasing number of anglers.
Look at it this way. If you live in Hampshire for instance and you have got sick of carping, you think well I will go and look at the Avon etc and try for a barbel. I want something that pulls a bit, I have heard that barbel do I will go off and try to catch one. Now this angler knows that his smaller carp rods will make a worthwhile barbel rod and so off he trots to the Avon. He straggles at first, but eventually he gets a few and hey these things don’t half pull a bit, and added bonus the banks are not packed, the scenery is superb and you get a confirmed barbel angler.

Take the same angler and place him slap-bang in the middle of Fenland. The comparison is obvious. No barbel here and few Chub so we have a go for pike and zander, and so the numbers swelled.
I can already hear a few out there already thinking, more’s the pity, but is it really? Well for the same reasons as carp yes, but on the whole I think no.

More anglers on the bank have increased the amount of information available on the species and so tackle as already mentioned, and tactics have come on, in leaps and bounds.
Several anglers have become well known to the angling world at large because of their zander angling exploits.

We have had the first book on the species for many years in the shape of Steve Younger's excellent, if somewhat short, Fenland zander. Books and articles like these can only help to educate the new breed of zander anglers as Neville and Barry Rickards book did the first.
Magazines like this one have come to our newsagents, and new generations of zander angling writers are emerging – all with different perspectives on our quarry. There has never been a better time to start off as a zander angler.

Record breakers
And what of the zander itself? The record has steadily increased to the current record of 191b 5oz. But the record fish themselves tell the story of the zander’s spread. The past three records tell of the spread of zander throughout the country.

These fish have come from a Stillwater, a fairly fast flowing river and finally back to its original home. If you add to that list canals then you cover the full spread of habitats that the zander have now colonised. The spread will continue. Anglers will unfortunately still take things into their own hands and gradually the list will lengthen. Sometime there will be the first 20lb zander in the country, and what a fish that will be!
As the pool of knowledge and differing habitats has emerged so new tactics have emerged with them.

I have personally caught zander now at times and dates that were at first thought unlikely. The first generation of zander anglers did the pioneering and set the guidelines by which most of us fished.

We all know that the zander is superbly adapted for feeding in low light conditions and any conditions that aided that adaptation would result in many zander on the bank. However, as the zander has become a more respected quarry we realise that this is not always true.

Conventional conditions
Night fishing is a case in point. zander are a nocturnal feeder, but when the weather gets colder I have found the days to be far superior to nights. This is a shame, as I absolutely adore night fishing, in particular for zander.

Further to this, when the weather gets really cold I have found bright sunny days the equal of overcast cloudy ones. But convention would have us expect that this would not be the case.
Likewise warm sunny days should by conventional thinking be a complete waste of time, but are all parts of a river going to be suffering from bright conditions? How bright for example do you think it is under the shade of a bridge, or underneath a Lilly bed? The biggest lure caught zander that I have ever seen caught I have included a photo of in this article. The temperature that day was in the eighties and there was a bright blue sky, but this fish was taken from underneath a Lilly bed. Everything is relative. The zander is at home in low light, but it has to eat to survive, so it has to balance the two factors. So it will lay and wait where it can gain maximum advantage.
zander are often described as nomadic hunters. How true is this?
During the boom in the 90s on the middle level main drain there was famously a zander that was caught several times from a similar area, this fish being christened the non-swimmer. Was this fish a non-nomadic zander or did it just feed in this area regularly and so get caught there? I myself this year caught the same 12lb zander from the same swim with a two-week gap between captures. Another non-swimmer?

Maybe, no one knows the real story and we possibly never will, but think about it. We probably only ever realise that we have had a repeat capture with the bigger photographed fish. How many times does it happen with schoolie sized zander, and never realised?

Maybe the zander only ever get big because they forsake the pack instinct and turn to a more solitary ambush type existence, similar to pike.

Intense competition
If you have ever watched a shoal of perch feeding, which after all are related to the zander, the competition for food can become very intense. I kept some perch in an aquarium for a while and the perch would literally try to take the food from each other’s mouths. This competition is hardly going to be conducive to maximum growth potential. Perhaps the fish that grow really large, either by accident, natural progression or by design leave the school and strike out on their own.

Another factor that could possibly give credence to this line of thought is the instances of large bags of large zander. Two or more double figure fish in a night is not unheard of but it is on the whole an exception rather than the norm.

I am by no means trying to press that this is a definite fact. There is so little in angling that is set in stone but I think that it warrants consideration.

So we finally come to methods of fishing.

Pike tactics
I think it is fair to say that a large number of zander  are caught today on tactics aimed at catching either pike or zander. But how any more zander would be caught with a little bit of fine-tuning.

One of the old clichés that I have heard is that zander do not like resistance. Now in a large part I prescribe to that theory. All my leger rigs incorporate low resistance rings, and booms to keep the line free-running from the bottom debris.

For the most part I think that the zander angler would be best served by this. I have found that this particular stands up in the really cold weather. It was once thought that zander activity slowed almost to nothing in the winter, but my own, and other better-known angler’s results have shown this to be untrue. However they do seem to become more resistance shy. Perhaps this is why when anglers were using pike gear was not catching them. I would in the winter always really investigate any bleeps even singles. My alarms (Optonic Super XL’s) rarely give false bleeps any way. But it is so easy to miss just a slight rod nod if you are not constantly scanning the rod tops and a single bleep may be all the indication that you get. I still think that zander will feed in the coldest weather, but they are less likely to run off with a bait, hence the rod nods etc. by feeding this way I feel that the fish are more in tune to feel resistance. Where it is possible I set my drop offs to fall at the slightest tug and point the rod at the bait. Not always possible but where it is I follow this. On the other hand, I have had occasions, (normally where I have made a mistake in setting up) where zander have almost taken rods off the rests or out of boats to get at my baits.

On one occasion I forgot to open the bail arm on my reel after setting the drop off  (it was in the dark!) fishing at Roswell pits. My margin bait was taken at midnight and the fish took off down the margin with the rod bent round and the reel handle spinning. Hardly resistance frees!
A brief mention was made of boats. More and more zander anglers are finding themselves in a position to be able to fish for zander from a boat, and this allows what is in my opinion one of the most devastating methods for locating zander, and that is trolling.
Because of the mobile nature of trolling it allows the angler to find the packs of zander incredibly efficiently. I have had some great days trolling livebaits for zander on Roswell in particular. The way that I approach it is as follows.

Troll with two rods from the back of boat spread as far as possible. Upon getting a run from a zander I will drop anchor to boat the fish. Then once the fish has been released I would fish the area that the run occurred from for at least thirty minutes thoroughly searching the area You can have some really fast and furious fishing using this method. I have on occasion had three zander in the net at the same time and on one occasion ten fish to l0lb 14oz in an hour before I completely ran out of bait! Diagrams of the rigs that I use are included in the articles. If you have got access to a water that you can boat fish for zander, then give this a try. It is great fun.

So the tactics have moved on, the tackle has progressed and the fish are getting bigger. There cannot be a better time to be a1 zander angler. When an angler sees a big zander for the first time the look I can only describe as being awestruck. It is a sight that I never want to grow tired of.

May you all be awestruck in the near future!
 

This article was first published in Pike & Predators magazine