At last

Allright, enough blues for now, time for some more action.

If the few open waters in the west don't produce any pike, let's head east and see if the local waters of Harmen-Jan and Erik will be any good right now. After a great lunch at Erik's place we jumped in our more than multiple layers and started off at the stream we all hoped would give us a fair pike or two, with a chance of a real whopper as well. After all, last week Erik lost a meter plus there fishing on his own, so with the three of us it was nothing more than reasonable to expect at least one meter pike landed.

Although quite murky, the water level turned out to be not too bad at all. So off we went in search of our beloved fish-croc. And even though we didn't see any fish at first, being out there together, having fun and enjoying the scenery was already more than enough to justify  our hands freezing off in the cold.

Then we arrived at one of Erik's hot spots, which deserved some extra attention. Being a true gentleman, Erik insisted that I would pick up the pike that was waiting there for us. But whatever we tried, it remained sound asleep (or maybe just laughed at our streamers).

  

O.k., so no pike there, and time was becoming an issue if we wanted to land any pike that day. At least, that's how it felt to me. Harmen-Jan however still looked surprisingly confident as we stepped in the car to get to the next spot. Not much later, I understood why. He decided to take us to one of his favourite spots for picking up a pike during lunch break at his previous job (yes, he's the kind of guy that always has his car loaded with rods and streamers to be all set for a fish and run whenever possible).

Although Harmen-Jan warned me about the size of the stream and even more about the size of the pikeable part of it, I still had to raise an eyebrow or two when we arrived there and even more when it turned out I was supposed to actually fish in there. Eventually I did, but not after carefully watching my back to make sure no one else was witnessing this pityful piking attempt.

And even when Harmen-Jan advised me to cast my streamer to a certain place and be ready for an instant strike, I was still in my mode of sheer disbelief when I cast the fly and wanted to start stripping it in. This turned out to be not a bad approach at all, since it gave me the most spectacular strike up till now. While I was already thinking about the next cast (and the next fishing spot, to be perfectly honest), a pike rolled over the streamer the very moment it hit the water. Somehow I managed (or maybe better: was lucky enough) to hook the pike and the battle was on:

The question is however, will I land the pike after......

..........the police comes along, the pike decides to hide under the ice, and..........

.......the other obstacles along the way? Find out about that within two days on this blog!