THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

I'd never been to East Anglia before either, so I looked it up on the map, caught the recommended small
rudd dead-baits, then headed off down the motorway at four in the morning with a list of road numbers
to follow as there was no GPS back then, arriving at the designated spot sometime around eight am.
I remember looking along this long straight featureless cut in the ground thinking to myself, where do
you start. At some point obviously I put the tackle box down, sliced off a rudd fillet, then lobbed it out
along the margins as a free-lined offering.
Not being a freshwater angler, sophisticated tackle was non-existent. An open bale arm and a piece of
paper looped over the line with a coin on it placed on top of a rusting tin box was my bite indicator. I
then sat back and promptly nodded off.
At some point shortly afterwards I was very rudely awoken by a sort of scraping noise which turned out
to be the coin being dragged along the rusty tin lid. Minutes later I had my first cast first ever zander on
the bank. A fish of at best two pounds, after which we didn't see another thing all day.
I later somehow managed to lock my car keys in the boot, hot-wired the car to get it to start, then found
that the steering lock was still active, though that's another story. But with regard to the fishing, in the
words of Julius Caesar, veni, vidi, vici. I came, I saw and I conquered. So many thanks to John Watson
for that.
I've done quite a bit of zander fishing in the years since, ironically with a similar sort of background
story to it. I was sat at home one evening when John Wilson rang. He needed some photographs of char
for a book he was working on. So, never one to miss an opportunity, I quizzed him about some decent
'X' marks the spot zander fishing in return to cut out any long range trial and error time wasting, and he
came up with Three Holes where the Sixteen Foot and Middle Level Drains come together close the
road bridge.
Anywhere up along the Middle Level would do fine he said for pike or zander in the day time, and more
specifically for the zander as the light started to fade late afternoon on into the evening. So down again
we went.
It must have been back-end, because although the day was beautiful, come evening time I remember it
was very cold. Eel portions were the bait, and while we tried to free-line them, on some of the several
subsequent visits, this wasn't always possible due to the water flow if the pumps were operating after
heavy rainfall.
Fishing two rods, one close in to the
margins of each bank, we took literally
dozens of zander to maybe six pounds,
plus quite a few nice pike. In fact, on
one day in particular I had pike of
seventeen and nineteen pounds in
successive casts.
Steve Loades, Middle Level Drain
Later that afternoon, we also saw a
zander of thirteen pounds six ounces
caught just up from where we were
fishing taken by Steve Loades. The
biggest Zander I've ever seen in fact,
and a very creditable fish back then, as
was anything making it into double
figures.
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