Tournament day 2 (part 3)

We were back early and decided to go up into a small creek where some boats disappeared into this morning. Kari was not totally fine with that, he was trying to explain us something, but in the end we decided to go in there, Hajee paddle-poling the boat and me on the bow, trying to get at least another fish for the score. When we came up to a pool there was this bridge and now we could see what Kari meant. This was a shortcut to the other places we would fish every day, but due to some rocks underneath the bridge it was too shallow for him to pass through.
Our day already tasted like defeat and we saw some nets standing in the pool. The moral was not so high as the end of the first competition day and just as we wanted to turn around and go back to the finish we saw the boat of our Dutch companions coming at the other side of the bridge. Harmen-Jan was shooting some photo’s of Erik with something big in his hands.
It resulted to be a seagull. It got trapped in one of the numerous nets that are placed on some of the spawning areas and they rescued it from drowning. As thanks the seagull tried to get a firm snap of Erik and it was obvious this bird did not want to become some blog-material for the Dutch Four. Luckily for us and unfortunately for the bird Harmen-Jan did manage to get some shots of it, before it bit Erik quite hard and got released.


net's not funny


what happened to the guinea pigs and half chickens?

We lined up the boats. Both man in the other boat were stoked. They had a nice day, about 15-20 pike in the boat and some good sized fish to make a nice score for that day. The boat they had was very good and they recommended us to take it the next day. The tactics they used were the same as they started out with that morning. Just going into the shallows and try to find some fish that were finished spawning already, in the areas next to the spawning pike . And it did pay of, as Erik caught a really good one that could well be the one on top of the charts and going for the grand prize of the biggest fish. Both man contrasted against our deception and it gave us some energy. At least not everybody had a lesser day and at least the pride of the Dutch was still well defended. Tomorrow should be the final day and everything would depend on how the others did today. The 3 minute ride back to the docks was exciting, just because of that. All four of us wanted to know how other teams had done.
It resulted Harmen-Jan and Erik did quite well, the England 1 team of Mike and Guy also had some pike that were good enough for the count and the Finnish team kind of missed some fish so at least their lead was not huge anymore (still it was a lot). Hajee and I had to take some poundings and saw our Dutch teammates of Netherlands 1 pass by, where the England 1 and Finnish got more than just one pike, so they got more lead on us.
The Canadians and England 2 had a sized fish in the boat as well, so now all teams were on the board.


Fish like this are good for the scores


Erik does not like to pose, but he did very well

Later in the evening we discussed the day once more. In the end we came to the conclusion that big mama’s place had not delivered a single fish today. We lost some nice fish there, both yesterday and today. But all teams loose some fish and we just did not get well enough into the good action. Boats were planned that evening, Harmen-Jan advised us to go with the guide they had today. A much better boat to get onto the areas where the pike are at this moment. Hajee and I agreed we would do that, cause we ended the day quite frustrated of not being able to fish two man at the same time and not getting into the zone where the most action was. On the other hand I felt very sorry for Kari. He did all his best the past days and he searched us up every morning to see if we would go on his boat. Now we would be going with another boat and somehow it made me feel like a traitor. But hey, we wanted our share of the action as well, so let’s see if on day 3 we do get into a better boat and if one of our teams (or England 1) will be able to beat the locals on their home turf.