A bit of cloud and rain wouldn't go a miss

I don't have objections to daylight saving time, but when the clocks go back or forward the night before I go fishing I always manage to have some kind of disaster. After many such occasions on this particular day I have stopped agreeing to met up with any of my angling buddies at a specified time to prevent any such disasters messing up my mornings fishing. I did however tell Rob that I would be on the river before first light if he fancied it, and he did turn up for a chat later on in the morning.

Compared to last week the Avon looked a bit dowdy, but it was exactly what I wanted to see when the light did finally make an appearance an hour after I arrived on the bank. My zander fever is now in full swing and only the river full of unknown monsters can help salve this affliction. So I had returned back to the same area I  fished the week before for another go. The difference this week was the forecasters had predicted a cloudy over cast day with a good serving of rain to boot. Perfect for zander...

I didn't get any interest before the light broke but once it did the first bite was very aggressive and resulted in a nice zander of 4.1lbs which had a huge healed scar on its back, where I fancy a heron or cormorant had taken a chunk out of it in its youth.

Casting the bait out straight away into the same area, I didn't even have enough time to smoke a cigarette before the tip went violently over again, and I contacted with a second smaller fish of just 3lb. 

Again the light levels began to increase a bit too far for my liking and with it the bites stopped as instantly as they started. At the moment the still gin clear water combined with high day time light levels are conspiring to keep the Zander feeding spells confined to only a few hours a day. In the morning half light, then in the evening as the light fades. I don't even think they are feeding much in the dark as whenever I have been on the river this year in the dark it has not been that productive at all, so it's just a case of waiting for the right day and conditions. Judging from the hollow stomachs on these fish and the aggression of the bites they are hungry and ready to have a proper feed when conditions dictate ready for winter.

After giving up on the Zeds for the day I switched over to a float rig and went exploring some slacker water to see if any pike might be interested. I only managed to get one run and upon striking at something I felt sure would be solid I was disappointed to find no one home and a bait free hook. Something got a free meal today.

One good thing for the river fishing right now is that the dense weed of summer seems to be dying off and even though the wind is stripping the leaves from the trees all the time, the river doesn't seem to have any large amounts of flotsom and jetsom coming down it, which really helps with the fishing. Hopefully soon we might get a bit of well needed colour in the river too.