Back to seasons's start

When I first read about the tournament last august it triggered me to start thinking about pike fishing again. In the Netherlands pike season closes in march, and before it is legal to start pike fishing again the true fly fishing addcit already is busy with other parts of his precious sport.

Myself, I am a true addict. If I wouldn’t fish for a week, I don’t think I could be held responsible for my behavior anymore. To my girlfriend that can be annoying. I will never be able to walk past a pond, stream or any other type of water without checking it out for the rest of my life. Spotting fish, looking for obstacles, checking out if something is hatching, or even better… is there activity of a rise for example? There is not a single day I don’t think about a fly rod, a tying pattern or fish.

And when I am too busy, I will always manage myself into a position where I will be able to fish for just a little while. One free hour of spare time, just making a few casts during lunch break. It all adds up to the need for fishing that my soul is craving for.

So back to the start of the adventure. The tournament and just thinking about participation made the itches come. Although it was the beginning of october and I was still in a trout and grayling modus, thinking about small nymphs and dry’s, the attention got drawn to the bigger flies. Much bigger I should say, being streamers of at least 10 inches.

The last trip to Denmark should have been a nice and promising autumn one, but weather was going to be worse up there. And last minute, Hajé and I decided it would not be worth the drive all the way up north, just for some murky water nymphing with a strike indicator, where the aim would have been sight nymphing for the biggies. So instead we both decided to earn a little credits with our girlfriend (or family in Hajé’s case). And we did decide to go out one of those days for that very first session of guinea pig launching for pike.

Getting to the spot already was loads of fun, because we both went there with our own car and on the highway we already drove next to each other. After 8 or more months where the heaviest rod we took to battle was a five weight, dressed up with a nymph or dry for trout, it always is a bit surrealistic to stand next to a small canal (Dutch call them sloot) of about 10-20ft wide. Dead water, no stream or ripple except for some wind. The 8 weight and 10 weight rods come out of their tubes and the streamers look even bigger than last year. Myself, I tie on (well, tie…. it’s a crosslock) one of my favorites. A big streamer made out of 2 zonkerstrips and a large bucktail head.

It’s at the second cast a shadow rises and the next cast the fish can not resist that ignorant bug anymore. A big swirl and a strong pull on the line. I strip strike and not much later the first pike of the season is a fact. Hajé takes some pictures and it gets it’s freedom back.

We stroll along the small canal, bridges and corners are hotspots, but yet it does not seem to work that way. The water is still warm and we can not really figure out a specific hotspot. Just locating the smaller baitfish and chances are there is a pike in the neighborhood. We exchange our rods every now and then. One is my own, a rod that never failed me and I already had so many nice adventures with it. The other rod we brought along is a rod we are testing. It can be a potential sponsor rod for the competition. Of course we will report more on the rods in other reports later this year.

Hajé ensures he’s not going home with a blank before the first hour passes away. And we are happy we did not go to Denmark but stuck around in the Netherlands. It is incredible how quick one can get the pace of piking back. After that first hour it is done. The addiction of fishing for pike is really back and it will take long before this leaves the blood again.

We manage to get two more pikes, one each. Average sized fish for this polder, between 20 and 25 inches. Here´s Hajé´s one:

Then I cast my streamer in between some branches of a willow and it drops on the water. Just two strips and the water explodes. A hard take, a good strip strike and the fish is on. This is a bigger one and although I fear no breaking of my material I need to give it a few meters of line. When I get her in the hand it is quite a lady. She reaches a nice 35 inches plus and Hajé and I admire the beauty and strength of this Dutch crocodile. A personal best for this polder, and that on the first day! The rod managed very well, good way of testing it on animals ;-)

Disaster happened to be just minutes away, because within ten casts after we released the nice fish I got my line stuck behind a log. As I pull it to get loose the fly line snaps within the guides of my rod and the rod gets abused badly. Later when I inspect it I notice there were three guides that did not survive the outward shooting of a broken line. It means the end of a fishing day. We walk back to the cars, unbelievable how far you can stroll away in just a few hours. As this was our first day of the planned trip to Denmark we decide to go out on one more day as well (the trip to Denmark was planned for 4 days, so the family still has a 2 days profit), already the addiction has hit us very hard…

Sander

N.B. Not all the pictures of this session were posted, because that would´ve involved shopping away the rod. And since we´re still in the middle of the process of rod testing, we didn´t make any final deals yet. So you might wanna take a rain check for those other picco´s.