Just Spotted this piece. Thanks Mark, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time and we'll have to do it again sometime.
Since that Trip I've actually changed from using the barbel rods to a pair of Daiwa Signature spinning rods for my zander work. They're effectively lightweight pike rods but with a nice full cork handle.
Still catching a few Trent zeds but it went hard on both the river and a stillwater I've been targeting this past week.
Tight lines,
Bob
PS: Re the querry on rigs:
For me it's a really light, low resistance set-up although a lot of zander anglers advocate a heavy lead that doesn't move. So that's about as contradictory as you might expect.
As for terminal tackles I've mainly been using snap tackles this year on wire although I have caught on single barbless size 4 hooks with braid and hair rigged baits. Horses for courses on that one and depends very much on your confidence and size of baits.
Mark uses much bigger baits than me for zander, but like he says, I want to catch anything that swims.
Depends really how many pike you're likely to encounter but I find the single to braid seems to work very much like a circle hook and lodges in the scissors every time so as yet I've not had one bite-off.