The summer of 2016 I had been on a fishing expedition to catch my first Zander on either the river Severn or Avon in Tewkesbury Gloucestershire . I had been trying to catch these elusive zander for nearly two years but had failed to catch any , due to many other distractions such as catching bream, improving my bushcraft skills and exploring the nearby forest of dean.
My zandering expeditions involved leaving my little cottage in cornwall and travelling overnight by megabus up to bristol.i would then often sleep for a few hours at bristol university in the student cafe which stays open all night. next morning i would then transfer to another bus to gloucester. then yet another bus took me up to Tewkesbury. My trips up to tewkesbury would be every other week ... one week in cornwall followed by one week in Tewkesbury followed by one week in cornwall and so on.
My accomodation in Tewkesbury was initially a fishing bivvy combined with a Camo Tarpaulin. This was quickly erected in the grounds of Tewkesbury Abbey underneath a big old cedar of Lebanon. later i moved to the back of the abbey garden, behind a yew hedge near the compost heap. My friend from Cornwall richard who was also living "up-country" sometimes camped with me . I would get to the abbey late at night maybe 11 o clock, climb the locked gate and set up camp. I would try and be up to dismantle my tent before 8 am when the gates were unlocked however sometimes i would oversleep and be disturbed by early morning dog walkers in the abbey gardens. they never said anything to me upon seeing me and my bivvy but i felt uneasy about the situation and after a few months i decided to find alternative camping.
I moved locations to the woods near the famous Tewkesbury battlefield i think its called the blood field. This is where one of the important battles took place during the wars of the roses and its where prince edward is said to have been slain.
Going through the middle of these woods is a power line and consequently every few years the saplings growing beneath the powerlines have to be cut back to the ground.. coppiced if you like.
This area is ecologically interesting as these saplings are actually elm suckers that have sprouted from the nearby mature elms .most of the mature elms have now died succumbing to dutch elm disease (which is a fungus ...Ophiostoma ulmi or O. novo-ulmi). However despite the large trees dying their suckers live on, the reason being is because they are being coppiced .. cut to the ground . Dutch elm beetles , the carriers or vectors of the disease, only attack mature elms that have reached a height of 4 to 5 metres.
I decided to enter and explore the dense area of elm suckers which were about two metres high at the time. Because of the density of the vegetation i could see that perhaps this was an ideal place to make a camp.
I started by cutting a narrow tunnel through the suckers using secateurs and hand saw. this tunnel continued for approx 15 metres into the elm and other undergrowth . the tunnel changed direction a couple of times so it didnt look so obvious as a tunnel. ps. i have made a similar camp to this in cornwall, tunneling through dense stands of young blackthorn at the bottom of a disused field.
Section 2 creating the Elm- bender at Camp Dead-Elm
Creating the bender.Eventually i came to an area where i decided to set up camp . i created an open area 8ft x 8ft in the elms suckers cutting them down close to the ground . i decided to call my camp Dead Elm as the clearing i had created was in the shadow of a dead elm tree approx 4 metres high and pecked on by woodpeckers.
My next job was to select and cut six long straight elm suckers each approx 6ft in length. once cut they were trimmed of all side shoots and stuck into the ground in a perimeter circle at even distance from each other. see diagram. they were then bent over so that their ends joined in the middle and tied together with the cheap plastic rope you can buy from the poundshop. I try to use natural coloured rope ... green, brown or grey.i added more lengths of sapling horizontally around the framework to create extra strength and rigidity to the bender. The bender frame was now ready for covering.
I used a 3m x 2m camoflage woodland tarpaulin which covered most of the bender framework and tied it onto the base of the framework using the gromit holes on the edges of the tarp.
Section 3 Zandering Lower Lode (River Avon)
As mentioned at the beginning of the book my original reason for coming up to Tewkesbury was to catch Zander
( although there was another reason a woman involved which isnt really part of this story) .
Tewkesbury is unique for fishing as it is the joining point of
two important UK rivers , The Warwickshire Avon Joins the mighty River Severn here. Zander a species from Europe,
have been introduced into the river severn for a couple of decades now and they soon spread from the severn
into the Avon.
Basically i hadnt much of a clue how to set about catching my first zander. now three years later
after much trial and error i have caught quite a few zander.
now i know the techniques and locations its not that difficult..
My first attempt at zander is actually on a you tube video unfortunately it has more dislikes than likes possibly due to my naff filming skills and waffling on so much!! . It was on the Avon just above the lower mill (there are two mills in tewkesbury). I first had to catch my bait ... roach (as deadbaits)..using a swimfeeder and maggots. it was freezing conditions but I caught a couple of roach casting alongside a barge on the opoosite bank. the first roach was too big for catching the average zander so i released it. the second roach was smaller and so i humanely dispatched it. I mounted it on a simple ledger rig onto a treble hook and used a trace ( in case i hooked a pike whos teeth can easily cut through nylon) . The treble hook i used was probably a bit too large for average size zander and i wasnt totally happy with the size of the roach still a bit on the large size. I thought to myself im more likely to catch a pike with this size bait and hooks ... and sure enough near the end of the session i caught a pike of about six pounds. My first ever zandering session ended with no zander but i was happy i caught the pike .. my first in ages. Ill go back to the zander story later in the book.
Zander Camp
I named the Bender i discussed earlier my zander camp as it was from here I did my zandering expeditions . I made an additional lean too near the camp in the woods the roof was made of a nettle thatch where using cloves and a machete I collected bundle of mature nettles and tied then in big bunches. These were layed over a lean to framework of elm branches as elm suckers were in great abundance here under the electricity pylons. The nettles too were in massive abundance along the banks of the Mill Avon and it was now mid summer when they has reached their maximum size and before they started to die down in autumn.
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