Zedlets!

Zedlets - Small Zander no bigger than 2lb in weight.
That's what I was catching this afternoon, the session started at Long Itchington heading up the flight of locks towards Napton fishing a few spots along the way. I've been wanting to have a look along this stretch for a while but there was a fair amount of ice around and not many boats had gone through so there weren't that many spots free to fish. A couple of locks up from the Blue Lias I saw a spot in front of one of the overflow weirs that looked very fishy and I soon had a bait cast over, I was pleasantly surprised at the depth, around five foot and even more surprised when I started getting some strange movements on the float, I knew straight away what was causing these and it wasn't long before I had a small Zander in the net.

I continued to fish between the locks on my way up the canal, the water movement near the gates kept these parts free of ice but after an hour or so of trying I had no more interest in the deadbaits so I continued to move along the canal towards a spot I'd seen on Google Earth last night.
I eventually reached the bend in the canal with a heavy growth of Reeds and Bullrushes along the side of the towpath, this spot looked better than I thought and the depth in front of the reeds was good, not long after casting in the first half a Roach, I had a twitch on the float and then some movement showing that another Zed was interested, a few minutes later, Zander number two was on the bank, another small fish but with the temperature dropping as the sun set I was more than happy to catch them at this size.

I put another fresh bait out onto the same spot and after about ten minutes it was off again with another small one, it was whilst I was dealing with this fish that I spotted my other float giving a twitch and then start to drift around, another Zander of similar size was soon on the bank bringing the afternoon's total to four fish.

I did have plans to fish on into darkness, but with my landing net taking on some weird shapes due to the frost and the big full moon rising into a clear sky, it was only going to get colder, I called it a day.