If you don't expect anything.....

....everything's a bonus. Regrettably, we did exactly the opposite about 3 weeks ago when we planned another full day of fishing after the 3 hours on the previous day. Lured by the abundance of (at last!) ice-free polder waters near Utrecht and the promising stories of Sander and Hajé about their home-waters, Harmen-Jan and Erik once again made it all the way over from the east to treat themselves to some hungry/angry pike.

How different things went. During the morning, only Sander managed to get a small pike.




In the afternoon, Hajé joined the unlucky group at one of his favourite spots he already recommended beforehand. Being sort of a 'host' at this water, he modestly started fishing at a spot that already extensively had been fished by his mates. This turned out to be a bad decision, because at the very first cast Hajé hooked and landed a nice pike.



And then you have to tell your mates that you didn't do that on purpose....


Luckily, not much more than a few minutes later, Erik was in business. Another fat-bellied winter pike showed itself.




Erik then showed us a neat and very cool-looking trick to release the pike with a fast flick of his hands, so that the fish swims away immediately. You may take the swirl as the proof of a happy, healthy pike swimming away in sheer gratitude:



Well, those two catches within a couple of minutes were rather promising for the rest of the afternoon. Aaaahhhh, stupid, stupid, stupid! More expectations! And indeed: no more pike that day, game over. Why don't we ever learn that you can't manage expectations? It just don't work. Even if you decide not to expect too much in order to feel really lucky when you do succeed, that decision alone already creates enough implied expectation to ensure instant failure.

Don't expect, just be surprised. Sounds like a great motto to win the tournament. So we better not follow that rule, because then we would expect to be surprised. Etc...........