The boys are back in town

As stated yesterday we're back to the Netherlands. After a long week of hardcore pike fly-fishing the mind is totally set on pike at this moment. We had an incredible week. The organizer, Simon Graham, turned out to be a relaxed South African dude who really did all he could to make our stay and tournament as pleasurable as possible. We met 4 Englishman who had the sense of humor the British are known for, team Canada were the kind fishbums you would love to have around at your campfire, the Finnish were good guys and a mean pikebusting machine with a nice “vision” on things. Hell, even François (the cook, not your waitress) was a good man to sit down and share some thoughts and many a beer with.

We were lodged at Eumer, a nice place with decks that make you sit comfortable next to the Merikarvia river, sharing some thoughts with teammates and the other competitors. When our food was ready we would all be called to sit down and enjoy. When we wanted to tie up some more streamers, we could go to Eumer's fly shop next to the lodge to get free tying materials and have a ball in the conference room stocked with vices, bobbin holders, etcetera. We could even grab a rod and fish the river wich was stocked with decent sized rainbows. Or maybe a sauna, and after that a skinny dip in the river? It was all possible over there.

We ended up doing quite well on the tournament, especially considering the circumstances and the fact that we didn’t know the area and its fishery at all.
As the tournament moved to another location just 2 weeks before it would start, Simon had to rearrange a lot of things, especially since the Merikarvia river mouth is not so specialized in pike fly-fishing yet. The biggest problem were the guides. Up in Kvarken there are guides, here they just hired some guys with boats. This made the challenge even bigger, now everyone had to discover the area themselves. The guides (most of them) would not speak more than just Finnish and that made it even more difficult to explain the things you wanted. Basically it was just hands and feet.

At a certain moment I said to Hajee, my partner for this week, that it was quite stupid and funny that we kept on trying to explain the guide where to go and how to approach the area we wanted to fish in English, because we may as well have spoken Dutch or Swahili.

There was a huge difference in boats and the idea was to swap boats every day, so at least everyone had some days on good or better boats. And during the week we learned so much. The first days were tough as hell. As most pike still had their brains on procreating instead of feeding, it was hard to get on to those little area’s and groups of fish that already finished spawning and did fancy a nice after-orgy snack. During the week things improved dramatically and on the last two fishing days the pike all were really on a roll. How amazing it was to witness all that happen. It was pure pike-heaven!

Also, because of a steady high that was sitting in this area, temperatures reached up to 25 Celsius. We fished the last sessions in our t-shirts, under a cloudless sky and we still managed to have a ball! Lots and lots of pictures were taken and yeah, we are the pitiful bastards who need to figure out which ones we want to use for all the different destinations/sponsors.

The upcoming weeks we will try to share our sweet memories with you all. Hopefully one or two pictures a day, accompanied with some text explaining a bit about the picture or telling some anecdote. So see you back then!


The first fish of the week was caught by Sander. Well done mate!

And here's one for Ralph, our reel-guy: