Solo down sarf

I’ve thought about going down to Grafham to fish for Zander for the last few years, so I decided I would just do it. The forecast looked great on Saturday, the full week ahead looked doable, so much so I changed my booking to four days. Monday morning came around it looked like two days- that’s what I got.

Things didn’t get off to a great start, tired from the journey it took me a little while to suss out a problem right at the start of my first day. It was either a cracked ceramic eye on a brand new rod or the same thing on my baitcaster. I bought that a year ago, this was its first trip out. 3 rigs and a lost fish later the rod was put away in disgust. Can’t say I enjoyed day one too much. I caught about a dozen Perch, picked up some info but I wasn’t sure how much further forward I was. I dropped a little Zander at the side of the boat about mid-afternoon but that didn’t provide much encouragement on the Zed front, I’ve had larger fish suppers.  I got some decent shut eye and I was ready for day two. Having carried out some late night preparation I was more organised. Not having to drive six hours to get here was a bonus. What did work well for me was my Lowrance 5 HDI. Having stripped it out of my Outback I rigged it to  a RAM mount on top of an old tool box. This held two 12v 9ah batteries, also from my Outback. I paired this to a Lowrance suction cup mount with a coating of Vaseline to assist in providing a better seal. A quick scrub of the transom with a scouring pad to get rid of the green gunge  provided a solid solution. I'm considering upgrading to a new Lowrance with structure scan. This would have been really handy on this trip, the more information you can get when fishing a new venue is always a good thing. Structure scan would  have been a great advantage.

The famous aeration tower

Some lovely Perch in here. I was somewhere between wanting to catch them but looking elsewhere. Maybe at the this time of year the best anglers on here can do broadly both at the same time. I struggled with this.

Long story short I didn’t land any Zander, certainly fished better on day two and gave myself some chances, lost two better fish, most likely  Zeds. I caught about a dozen Perch again in the process.  I fished better on day two, thought a lot more about what I was doing. I met a number of Grafham regulars, armed with experience earned and lots of electrickery catching good numbers of Perch and some Zeds.  I just wasn’t good enough for the latter on this occasion. I’m not too bothered if I fish much for the remainder of year, maybe a trip to Skye and back here. Grafham would be good again this month, would certainly save me the hassle of putting the Lowrance back in the Outback. Not caught a Zed for a year, being down here I could do the GUC tomorrow, doesn’t really hold the same prospects for big fish as here though. Up the road and a lazy Friday for me it is.