Having failed to get out at all over Christmas/New Year due to a combination of Mrs S and seasonal apathy I forced meself to have another bash at the Bury Hill zander this afternoon. Should be nice and quiet....midweek and everybodies back at work now.
Wrong ! I arrived to find a forest of poles as far as the eye could see as Guildford AS had decided to have a midweek match.All I can say is that the fixture secretary wants to go lie down somewhere until the madness passes. It was like a Civil War re-enactment and they'd been at it since 8 am ffs ! All of the bottom bank and half the long bank festooned with bream anglers . Needless to say this fine example of synchronised pole potting took out the majority of the best zander areas.
Damned if I was going to sit behind Jonny Squatt waiting for the match to end so I dragged meself past the Roundhead Infantry to an area that was good to me when I first started fishing for the BH zander but which I've not fished for a couple of years. It will just have to do. At least there were no carpers opposite to blind me but the water was very, very coloured. I thought it would either fish its head off or be rock hard.
It was rock hard. I had two bleeps about 3-30 on the Rh rod....a single bleep about 4 on the Lh rod which made me sit up straight and which about 2 mins later turned into a lovely slow run. I'm in and the blank is saved by a fish about 5lb. I got slightly excited as I was still at least 90 mins away from THE time but damn me.....I never had another indication of any sort until 6-30 when I had another single bleep.
And that was it. Even the 7-45 mugfish didn't turn up.
Conditions were not ideal. The water was as coloured as I've ever seen it and I didn't have anything smelly enough with me. I think in that sort of water you need something that's going to put a bit of scent down or you're reliant upon Mr Z bumping into your bait or you dropping it right on his snout. The forecast cloud cleared and it never really got very dark, it was bloody cold too....and then it turned foggy. TBH I think I did well to get a fish at all....there was one other bloke there after the zeds and he (like me) had only a couple of bleeps but none of his turned into runs.
Hey ho.....you can't bag up every time you go. I'd like to say I enjoyed it anyway but I didn't really. I've lost the love a bit at the moment...today felt like a chore and I never really settled. I suppose I'd feel different if I'd had a few.
The geese were quiet for once but God alone knows what was going on with the coots. There seemed to be some kind of massive nocturnal coot gang fight going on and more owls than the Gryffindor common room. That said I'd rather that than carpers yelling at each other.
Very odd trip. I'm not sure that I haven't had enough of this zander lark.
---------- Post added at 22:57 ---------- Previous post was at 22:49 ----------
It just ain't fracking fair. I've been misquoted and accused of being a tiddler basher, squatt queen, and gudgeon fancier
But you are all of those.
