To combine the useful with the pleasant...

...is a Dutchism that we more than put into practice last friday. We had an appointment at 12.00 with our clothing sponsor (who will be properly introduced on this blog later), and after that we visited one of our sponsors for the fly tying materials (who will also be properly introduced on this blog later).

All four of us had to take a day off especially for this, so why not take full advantage of it? And that's what we did. We made an early rendez-vous at one of Sander and Hajé's popular - and hopefully ice-free - piking waters at 8.00 in the morning, which meant that the guys from Utrecht could set their alarm clock at 7.15 while Erik and Harmen-Jan had to leave their beds as early as 6.00.

The first canal didn't produce any landed pike, just two 'followers'. A pity, because at this spot one always has a chance at a meter+. Off we went to a nearby polder. Since we find that during winter time the pike tend to congregate in the vicinity of farms and houses, we chose to fish the less picturesk but more productive roadside polder canals.

Although nothing to rave about, these canals did give us some fish. Hajé was the first to land one:






Next was Sander with a nice hook-up that took quite some more time than he expected:






After that it was Erik's turn, but the pike got off just before we could take some proud pictures of man and fish. We did capture a runaway shot though:



To be continued....