Trace material for Zander

[Anderoo]

I kind of took this down a lure route, and the case for flouro is (I think) quite easy to make for that. Dales, what about bait fishing? What effect do you think not using wire would have there?

[Dales]

The bait question is certainly a lot harder to call then lure fishing. My feelings are that it really depends on the bait you are using, hooks and maybe the venue and even micro location of where you are fishing on that venue.

 

In general I would think if fishing big lives and large deads/sections then "in general" it makes sense to use a wire trace but even that raises the issue of fishing for Cats with fish baits in waters with Pike. Bombing out a half a mackeral in to a standard mixed fishery without wire would be inviting disaster as the odds would favour a pick up from a Pike. I think you need to way up the situation you are in, local knowledge, fishery specific info, feeding habits of the fish at your venue both "natural" and "learned" and stack the odds in favour of a pick up from your target species. You can't be expected to tailor all your fishing around what might happen. So I don't see why a Perch or Chub angler should have to use wire to fish with a small minnow just because of Pike, if they end up catching Pike then they should adapt tactics.

 

As I started it about Zed hooklengths, maybe I should talk about them but the whole thread would be relevant to Cats, Perch, Chub and Eels as the main driver is fishing appropriately to a given situation and stacking the odds in favour of catching your target species and getting away from the "wire trace dogma" . Where I think the fish bait issue becomes more interesting with Zander is in the sizing of baits and hook size. My experience (Limited to a few still water venues and handful of river trips) is that Zander will take very big baits and all my best have come to some big baits on wire and all these baits would have attracted the interest of Pike if present in the area. While fishing this way I would expect a Pike to put in an appearence on some of these venues and so I am not arguing against the use of wire where the odds drift towards a Pike capture.

 

What I find fascinating is where anglers have developed techniques to be so selective with their bait fishing that they expect Zander with no Pike captures. This is often driven by bait size, we know that Pike can get educated to take chunks of fish and some anglers pre-bait for this reason. However taking the bait size down even further to very small pieces and slivers seems to eradicate Pike pick ups for a lot of anglers adding this to location some claim it just does not happen on the venues they fish. This is where the question of the wire trace comes in. If you believe that you are not going to get a take from a Pike where you are fishing and you also belief that Zander will not bite through your braid or fluro trace, then why use it? For Zander on pressured still waters then the trace material may buy you more bites. At BH there are anglers who have got the tiny bait thing down to a fine art, long before the switch to single hooks at the fishery and so for that venue it was a natural progression for the fish they had. (Phone, will hate this but they do wise up)

 

A similar style of fishing has been used on canals for Zeds/Chub without a wire for years. Their was a number of articles over the last few years in the mags promoting it as a canal tactic but some how it seemed to miss the Pike Police. In most forms of fishing we except that you can stack the odds in favour of catching and hopefully only catching your target species but their are some anglers that can't get past if you use bait or a lure you MUST have wire. For me it's about weighing up a situation and fishing in a manner that gives you the best chance of actually catching your target species but not at any costs.

[Anderoo]

Just saw this article in P&P and was reminded of this topic - huge Dutch zander with jigs well back in the mouth and flouro traces:

 

[Dales]

Those foreign chaps don't know what they are doing, what the article does not show is that they most likely got bitten off around a dozen times before landing one of those fish :-)