Introduction
This guide was written with the intension to show players of Russian Fishing 4 how to catch zander on Winding Rivulet. I like to point out to you that this guide is not a “catching guarantee”, but a guideline to help you find and catch zander on Winding Rivulet. All the data handed to you in this guide is meant for your own interpretation and getting you on track of this mysterious predator.
Data Collection
A total of 30 in real life hours were spent fishing in different, zander producing, spots. These spots were chosen by my experience as a angeler in real life and as outcome of trying a whole lot of spots, covering the whole river, and narrowing them down to the best producing spots. Although this guide mainly is meant for low- and midlevel players, it contains some info for higher levels aswell. I used a variety of equipment due to the different fishing methods, so every player should be able to create a zander setup matching his level. The collected data has been analyzed and put into graphs to get a better understanding of the preferences and behavior of the zander on Winding Rivulet.
Species Overview
The zander is a species of fish from freshwater and brackish habitats in western Eurasia. It is a popular game fish and has been introduced to a variety of localities outside its native range. The zander is closely related to perch,and therefor often called pike-perch as they resemble the pike with their elongated body and head, and the perch with their spiny dorsal fin. Zander are not, as is commonly believed, a pike and perch hybrid.
Although the zander can reach a length of 120 centimeters, a zander of 80 centimeters is already considered large. Their weight can rise to 11 – 12 kg..
Zander is a fish from the open waters and lives mainly in deep water. They spawn from April to May at temperatures of 12 to 15 ° C. The males make a pit in shallow water that exposes the roots of aquatic plants. The eggs are guarded by the male and supplied with fresh oxygen-rich water by fin movements. Zanders don`t like too much light and will look for deep or shady places during the day. Young zanders even die when the light intensity is too high. Young zander eats small water creatures such as water fleas. As they grow, this solitary fish changes to larger prey, in particular elongated fish. Zander has a preference for somewhat smaller prey compared to the pike, which can devour prey up to a third of its own body weight. The zander mainly hunts for prey between 5 and 12 o'clock in the evening and in the early morning. While hunting the zander uses his sideline organ which is sensitive to small pressure differences and water flows and enables the fish to find the prey by observing the vortices that are caused by moving prey. The sideline organ is also being used to detect larger stationary objects in the water, due to the disturbance they generate in the flow pattern around the fish. In the winter zander moves to very deep water if possible. Many zanders then live at depths between ten and twenty meters. Another characteristic are his big, blurry eyes.
Zander represents a great economic value, because of the highly valued fish meat and because of the large number of anglers who fish for this species with fairly advanced materials and boats.
Getting Started: Tackle And Baits
I used a variety of equipment for there are many ways to target zander. For this guide I used natural baits, bait fish and artifical baits, each with its own setup. Therefor the shown setups are an example, not a must have.
Bait setup
Lure setup
Baitfish setup
I fished mono, braid and fluocarbon lines, hooksizes 8 to 2 and tried as many rigs as possible. When jigging I used weights in the range of 2 – 17,5 gr. and only used the jiggin rig to keep it more simple. I`ve fished almost every natural bait, lures and baitfish trying to discover wich bait gives you the best chance of catching zander on Winding Rivulet.
Using so many different baits is a guarantee for catching a lot of fish species. I caught over 900 fish and 27 species of the 28 on Winding Rivulet, including 34 zanders. These numbers give a bite rate of about 3.8%, meaning zander on Winding Rivulet is a fish you don`t hook into very often.
The high number of gudgeons can be attributed to the natural bait fishing.
Locations
Now we know zander prefers deeper water its most likely to look for the deeper parts on Winding Rivulet. As mentioned before I fished the whole river and it is safe to state that the shallows indeed produce little to none zander. Occasionally I caught a small one in the shallows, but the bigger ones are lurking in the deeper spots. Winding Rivulet will not produce the numbers of zander you can catch at, for example, Sura River, so the chance of getting a really big one is a lot smaller then on the bigger waters in the game. But don’t let that stop you, there are still nice zanders to catch wich make you some decent silver. These are the spots I focused on during my time on Winding Rivulet.
Weather And Time Of Day
A benefit of fishing many hours on the same waterbody is you exeperience weather changes. These changes affect fish behaviour in different ways. Weather changes often come with a change in air pressure. For example a sunny day turns into a day with lots of clouds, the air pressure will drop (anticyclone to depression). This change of pressure has an effect on the swim blatter of fish. Fish feels this pressure and theire behavior will change. Another consequence of a weather change is the change of light intensity, for example a bright sunny day changes into a overcasted day. Fish in general, but zander in particular, are very sensitive for such changes. During my sessions on Winding Rivulet I discovered that during a change in the weather the zander stopt feeding for a while. When the weather was stable they started feeding again. As mentioned in the beginning of this guide, zander doesn`t like to much light. In early mornings when the sun is rising or in the afternoon / early evening when the sun goes down they are feeding. When the sunlight is at full intensity the feeding stops and the zander hides out in deeper areas.
Wind and (air)temperature both are factors to keep in mind, cause both influence the temperature of the waterbody. A big, deep waterbody takes more time to warm up or cool down than a smaller, shallower waterbody. Once the surface of a waterbody warms up, the wind can drift this warmer layer around and create a so called thermocline. For this guide I won`t go into detail about thermocline since this affects bigger waterbodies a whole lot more than a small one like Winding Rivulet. In the next graph you see the inlfuence of temperature and wind for zander on Winding Rivulet.
Notice that I caught no zander when the wind was west.
Fishing Spots
Only two spots produced zander during my session. This doesn`t mean you won`t catch them anywhere else, fish migrate remember. During my sessions however they liked two spots the most. These spots are 107:123 and 119:124. One odd thing I discovered fishing these spots was the behavior of the zander when catfish came in. As soon as I started catching catfish, the zander seemed to disappear.
Tackle And Bait Conclusion
Keep it simple!
Mono line and fluocarbon worked good for me, braided also caught me zander, but only with a fluocarbon leader. I used both mono and fluo in the range of 8 – 10 kg., no leader needed. When I used a leader with braided I used a 6 kg. fluo leader. These lines are capable to bring in zander and catfish up to 5-6 kg. The hooks I`ve tried range from size 8 up to size 2. I tested most brands, from Deadly loop up to Rage series, but the Berserk Hooks Rage Series S3 S6 would be my choice for zander on Winding Rivulet fishing natural baits. When lure fishing I recommend the Beserk Hooks Rage Treble S1/0 for the bigger lures. For smaller lures use the same series but adjust the size of the hook to the size of the lure. For those how can use live bait I would go with the Berserk Hooks Ultra LF Series S2, but again, using bigger baitfish you have to use a hook matching the seize of your bait.
Now the statistics on the baits used. What really suprised me was the atraction of zander to leeches. Like I mentioned I used a whole wide range of baits and had expectations of some of them, but leeches hit me by surprise. In the graphs you`ll see no spoons. From experience in the past I know you can catch zander on spoons, (Hypnotic 20 in black and reddish colours for example) but during my fishing fort his guide they had no interest in spoons whatsoever. Graphs say more then words so here are the baits that produced the best for me, but keep in mind, preferences of fish may change over time.
Conclusion
If you`re after a thropy zander Winding Rivulet is probably not the perfect waterbody to catch it. It is a rather small river with a small population of zander compared to Sura and other big rivers ingame.
For players who can`t go to the bigger water bodies yet, Winding Rivulet gives you decent zander and silver when you catch them. Keeping you`re tackle simple, using a artificial lure and fishing the deeper spots you should be fine.
I hope this guide has put you guys on the right track for zander on Winding Rivulet.
Have a lot of fun fishing and If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask me on the forums!
Greetings and tight lines,
Butcher™
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1696402882
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