 Hi everyone, in this video I'm zander fishing, zander fishing at Graffman reservoir. I was invited by my plate and sand pitcher to be his boat buddy in the Fluff Chuckers multi-species predator competition. A week prior to us visiting it hosted the Zandermania competition which involved pretty much all the best lure anglers going there and giving it a good spanking with lure rods. So the fishery itself is one and a half thousand acres, it's pretty featureless apart from the towers, it has depths of up to sort of 60-70 feet, a few bays that are worth exploring. Karpap is expensive but you can get your ticket refunded from Walsatolk that we couldn't use our own landing net and that's because of the killer shrimp that are in that reservoir. They're quite a unique species to the UK, they're non-indigenous and basic but abundant food source for the fishing there which is how they get so big. It's got well stocked shot so we're able to pick up a few flies, Sam went for big flies, my choice of fly was a pulling mill, tinsel towel, different size, eight barbless. So because of the killer shrimp they provide you with an enormous landing net and they also provide you with a drone. Pretty good ones actually if you're taking your own unhooking nets, which is something you have to do, be really careful if you don't spread those killer shrimp. And although we were supposed to be targeting all three predator species, perch pike, zander, I was really set up trying to catch a zander. As it's not a venue I've visited before and I've not caught zander on the fly before, I've had a steep learning curve, my choice of rod was an eight weight Shakespeare agility and I'll use an eight weight DY7 that I opted for an extra tough fluorocarbon straight through to the fly. On the first day I got no footage, it was a 20 mile per hour wind and poke was just all over the place. Needless to say we didn't catch anything. Using a boat stick and a boat rod holder we managed to watch something together to get our transducer in the water and get the fish fly set up. The other useful thing about doing a recce on the Friday was noticing all the fry around the boats when we launched. Feeling confident? No. Are you? No. We headed over to the North Shore that had been receiving the run to the wind the day previously and started off fishing some of the bays in about 15 to 16 foot of water when we had seen fish. It would have been lost without that fish finder. It was showing fish everywhere. The downside was that being a cheapy it didn't tell us what species those fish were. Obviously there's loads of trout in there. There's huge shoals of breams, very big ones as well can easily be mistaken for other big predators. The bays were full of weed and that weed went right out to about 12, 13 feet of water and we found that the fish were sitting just behind those weeds. It's not spent a lot of time taking weed off them. Fly. To my amazement I did actually hook one and it stayed on. It's a beachy mate. Oh my Jesus. That's a tiny little fly. So Charlie, we were a proper no doubt and we've got that little juicy fruit in there. Beauty. At first I thought it was a pike. I didn't need to weigh it because I knew it was a PB. I'm guessing seven or eight pounds. Which apparently is the average size and the graphite. What was really brought home was how powerful these fish are and how aggressive they are even on the boat. So remember this was a competition so filming wasn't our top priority but Sam did kindly stop, let down and get the camera out. And for once fortune was with me I hooked into another fish and this time I don't think Sam was particularly keen to stop what he was doing in record again. On the first one isn't it? Yeah. Ratham Zander. Same sort of size actually, back on 72 believe it or not. Yeah, weighs a bit more I reckon. Small fly again. This fish was caught amongst the huge towers of weed. And that was all the fish we had that day. We saw some enormous perch feeding but they weren't interested in our lures, they're more interested in feeding on the killer shrimp. In hindsight we wasted a lot of time travelling around the reservoir exploring. We tried the renowned towers but we're talking 40 to 60 foot of water and we didn't really know what we were doing. At the end of the competition at five o'clock Jack Welshman was declared the winner with five Zander and a pike. No perch were caught. Afterwards a load of guys went back on the water to catch more. I felt for Sam because he'd worked hard and we decided we'd give it one more shot on the Sunday. Ding ding, round three. Yeah, round three. Yeah, Xander. I think Xander, I just a fish to be honest. Good. Just a fish. So Charlie's into the first fish of the day. Pretty sure it's a Xander. He's fishing some smaller flies. I've gone for the big fly and we were just commenting. We were passing a boy that we thought a drog was going to get tangled in. Next words out of Charlie's mouth is fish on. Smaller than the ones from the day previously but it really buoyed us with optimism. False optimism. We've flogged the water all day until Sam finally got some bend in his rod. Come predator fishing for a competition and catch a trout. Nicely done. Nicely haven't handled it. I thought I had a big Xander. Any other day we would have been delighted with a fish like that. It must have been about five or six pounds in weight. So what have I learned about Xander fishing? I would say that I didn't need my ten weight rod. If you hook a big pike, which Grafim is renowned for, then eight weight will have to do. I'm glad I didn't use a wire trace because I only use a small barbless hook. If I catch a big pike with that, it will shake that hook or bend it out. But you still got half chance of landing it. The other thing I realised in hindsight is that those fish were sitting quite high up in the water because it had warmed up. Although they were in the deeper water, around 16 foot along those marginal shelves, they wanted to fly slow and they wanted it mid-column. And I expect they've wisened up to lures, whether that's on a fly rod or a lure rod, whizzing past their heads. The thing I'm most pleased about was my decision to use a duo of flies. Fishing two small lures, three or four foot apart from each other, allowed me to fish different depths of the water column. All three fish came on the top dropper. We slopped that water until about six o'clock on Sunday. I hooked a trout right towards the end but it fell off. I would say a huge thanks to Sam for being such a good boat buddy. My heart goes out for him really because it was a grueller. Grapham is not an easy reservoir. The ranger that gave us all his friendly advice on day one went out on the competition day and blanked. So that's quite telling. He's got bigger zander, they're more difficult to catch, especially when they've had a spanking. And apparently in the winter it's so difficult. People don't even fish it once it gets cold. I'm sorry the video's just been patched together but it was a competition and we were out of our depth. Please subscribe, comment, whatever. Even if you didn't like it because it all helps with what I do with Fishwish. Coaching this afternoon with Skulls and Junior Club. I'll try and get a video together on that actually. But next I'm off barbell fishing on the River Severn. Thanks for watching.