The MasterBlanker

As you can see from the post Winter Wonderland it is cold, damn cold at the moment. This has led to me being housebound for 2 months unable to get out as the lakes have been frozen. Due to this I have been going up the walls suffering from fishing related “cabin fever” so much so that my wife ordered me to go fishing at the 1st opportunity. As I had been out with Juul from FishingAmsterdam.com before it seemed the logical choice if I wanted a 1/2 decent chance of catching a zander to book with Juul.

The date was set and I was full of anticipation, at 07:40 sharp I arrived at the pre agreed meeting spot to be presented  with a cup of hot coffee and a croissant, not a bad start and it bode well for the day. Juul discussed the options as to the quarry and as zander were on the menu ( figuratively) we decided to start on them and then around lunch time swap over to pike as the day brightened up a little.

We arrived in the Ijselmeere before 08:30 and after a short journey began to fish for zander using the vertical jigging technique ( some of my UK readers my be unfamiliar with this technique so look back here for an article) and rubber stick baits. Alas the day did not start out all that productive with only a few missed takes. Zander at any time of the year are finicky biters but in the winter they practically just nudge the bait. You end up striking at the slightest vibration in case it is a zander just inspecting the bait.

One of the things I really like about Juul is that generally he will also fish as well ( depending on the number of guests) which means that if he is not getting takes then you know that the area is devoid of fish. This is quite a confidence boost as with zander it is easy to start to think that you are doing something wrong… some times there are  just no hungry fish in the area. Anyway a brief move to another hot spot saw us again jigging away waiting for a hungry fish, and before long there was the telltale gentle pluck on the lure, and I was in.

People often say that zander don’t put up much of a fight and sometimes they are right, however not today each zander put up quite a scrap and they continually dived and dived for the bottom but each were eventually beaten by the net.
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As we only had 1 day and as Bosbaan’s lines were still in myself and Marcel decided to go out Pike fishing. It had been good weather all week so we decided that Sunday had to be good.  Err welllllll, it rained. It raid a lot. It rained so hard I thought we were going to have to build an ark. I had to bail the boat out 3 times else I would have been sitting in 3 inches of water, and, as I write this post it is still raining.

Due to the inclement weather fishing was tough going, we needed a huge drogue just to stay vaguely on track in the water and with the wind turning the rain into horizontal bullets, our hears were not in it. Just after 2pm we decided to go and fish on the other side of the Nieuwe Meer Sluis, so with heavy hearts we moved on knowing that apart from jack pike there was not the chance of a good fish.

How wrong could I be ? with in 20 mins of starting fishing Marcel proclaimed to have missed a bite and the next cast this was his prize.

Not a bad Zander all things considering and a welcome end to the day. Hopefully next time we will be more mindful of the weather as there is no shelter on a boat when the weather turns like that.

Well the winter is coming in, the nights are shorter and the carp are starting to go into torpor. Time to break out the pike and zander gear !