Zander Fishing On The Great Ouse

Crossing the Old Course of the River Nene at Outwell on my winding journey to the lower reaches of the Great Ouse brought back a thousand memories. I hadn’t been this way since 1989 but it seemed like yesterday.

Some things are never forgotten, like the flashing of the violent electrical storm that reflected in the large silver rose bowl on my companion’s lap. Or the two newly minted gold medals in their presentation cases on the dashboard.

We were members of the triumphant Goldthorpe team, having just beaten 107 teams in our National Championship debut and established a new points record in the process.

Today’s trip couldn’t be more different. Here I was, out to fulfil a promise I made to myself a long time ago. I have always fancied doing some zander from the Fens but somehow never got around to it. That would all change in the next few hours.

I was joining an old mate, a Doncaster ex-pat, near Downham Market for an overnight session on the Great Ouse. “If it runs,” he said, “We’ll catch – for certain! But if it doesn’t, we’ll struggle.”

It mattered little to me, I was happy to drink in the experience. After all, catching is merely the end product of going fishing, a minor part of the magic of tackling your ambitions head-on.

Dave’s directions were dead easy to follow and I sneaked up unannounced to watch him catching a small roach every put-in on the whip. He’d even got the bait sorted.

A twig broke beneath my foot and betrayed my presence. Dave turned and greeted me with a look of exasperation, “You won’t believe it!” he said, “It’s been running so hard I was thinking of swapping to a stick float but all of a sudden it’s stopped. If it stays like this, we’re in for a hard time.

Did I care? Did I hell, “Give us a go with the whip then!” I said and another hour vanished…

But there’s no rush with zander fishing when the water is low and clear. Dave’s mate Neil summed it up perfectly, “Ten minutes after the sun dips behind yon floodbank is when we’ll get our first bite.”

All you can do until then is catch some bait, prepare your gear and fortify the inner man. With enough roach in Dave’s net to re-stock the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, we barbecued a couple of pounds of locally made sausages and talked fishing while the sun slowly sank.

Rigs mean everything when zander fishing. No other predator is anywhere near so sensitive to resistance. If your presentation is flawed you’ll suffer a high proportion of dropped runs.

With the river practically stood we were able to freeline our baits but a missed take and a hook pull to my rods in the first half hour of darkness had me switching over to a heavy running lead that increased resistance – sometimes a complete no-no with zander – but improved bite detection. After that I hit every pick-up. Enough said!

Dave’s prophesy of a hard session was spot-on, but we still landed four fish, the best a shade over eight pounds. This whetted my appetite for more and I returned several times as Autumn approached, scoring on every trip.

We went from low and clear conditions to floods in the next few weeks, putting my 250-mile round trips on hold for a while but I did risk one quick session last week on a day when the EA issued thirty flood warnings. Zander will happily feed during daylight in heavily coloured water.

Disaster struck when a sluice swung open at Denver and the flow rapidly increased to a point where an ounce weight was needed to hold bottom just five yards out. The flow itself wasn’t a major problem but the volume of rubbish coming through was. A constant barrage of twiggs, branches, lillies and cabbage leaves kept hitting my line and it soon became impossible to keep a bait in position for more than ten minutes.

A night with no sleep, no fish and a long drive home loomed, but I didn’t care. Zander fishing is strangely addictive and there’s so much to learn.

I’ll be back again as soon as the conditions settle down again.

Ten Top Zander Venues

The Lower Great Ouse

The Great Ouse Relief Channel

Forty Foot Drain

Twenty Foot Drain

Sixteen Foot Drain

Popham’s Eau

The Old Bedford River

Roswell Pits

Ferry Meadows

Old Bury Hill Fisheries

Coventry Canal

Coombe Abbey Lake