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.
I also must admit that this zander didn’t go back. I am a committed catch and release fisherman, but after 45 mins of holding it upright in the water it was not going to go back. We killed it humanely and gutted it there at the lake. A mate of mine offered to cook it and so it was his. Sad end but at least it didn’t go to waste. Moral of this story, zander are not as tough a carp and really more than 3-4 mins out of the water can be terminal for them. I have read that sometimes you need to prop them up for several hours with bank sticks in the margins so if this ever happens again I will do that.
The Masterblanker 