12 February, 2025 | Match & Coarse | Angler Blogs | Articles

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Kev Sanders: Fenland Zander Fishing

A tremendously insightful article this from specimen hunter Kevin Sanders who details how he targets Fenland Zander using feeder and deadbait tactics…

 

Kev Says: Growing up in the 1990’s, I was inspired by the massive Fenland Zander that would appear in the weekly angling magazines – In particular, Dave Lavender’s record from the Middle level drain gave me the itch to try and catch one for myself.

I was lucky enough to catch a 12lb specimen on my very first trip to a Cambridgeshire lake. That was about 25 years ago and remained my personal best all the way up to this season.

In all those years I have refined my methods of targeting zander. Gone are the days of just flinging out a dead rudd or roach and hoping a zander notices it. Of course, I caught a few doing this and no doubt many people still do.

I am always looking for an edge in all my fishing and scents and flavours play a big role in that. I wanted to see if I could up my chances of catching more zander by getting more attraction into the water. Injecting baits with oils like I do for pike gave me more confidence but I felt there was more I could do.

After reading up in my old zander books and speaking to some old school zander anglers, it seemed feeder fishing for zander could be the way to go. Using sensitive feeder rods with small fish deadbaits was a common way of catching them in the fens when numbers boomed after they were introduced.

I wanted to try and target larger specimens so for me soft feeder rods were out. I opted to use soft 2.25lb through action carp rods as this would allow me to cast out bigger baits. Bite detection would be standard drop off indicators. End tackle would be size 6 x2 strong VMC trebles and 28lb 7 strand wire. There’s no point fishing too light as I have found fishing light does not give any advantages when targeting big zander.

 

I would also use large 2oz feeders filled with chopped fish as a way of introducing the desired extra scent attraction. This was the perfect way of adding even more attraction by way of pouring liquids into the feeders too. The XL Liquid Predator was the first attractor I used when I first tried this method out. The stream of scent was clear to see when lowering the feeders into the margin.

I used the feeders on one rod to begin with but soon swapped them to all rods. I started catching zander in conditions I would not normally expect to and it was a no brainer to use feeders on all rods.

I was seeing encouraging results and looked to see if there were any other liquids I could use to work the odds even more in my favour.

Zander are not out and out predators and I remembered seeing them getting caught on worms in the past. I then started using the XL Liquid Worm and noticed some advantages.

The Liquid Worm is much thinner in consistency than the Liquid Predator. This gives an advantage when the water temperatures are low. The thinner liquid disperses much quicker releasing the desired food signals into the water.

Comparing from the last season using standard tactics to the following season using feeders, my catch rate easily doubled. I do not think I suddenly became a much better zander angler. I think I just improved my methods of catching them. And I believe scent was the biggest contributing factor.

Which all lead to me catching my new PB this season weighing 13lb 10oz. Caught on a rudd deadbait, feeder filled with chopped fish and lots of XL Liquid Worm poured in for good measure. It was also caught at night in very coloured water.

I definitely gave myself the best chance of letting the zander know exactly where my bait was.