Tournament day 2 (part 2)

Simon came along with some updates of the field. As we heard from him his recent information told us that the Finnish were having a hard time getting fish as well. One of the Canadians did get a nice one, around 90cm’s. The English had some fish but Simon could not recall if they had sized ones and our Dutch buddies did very well having at least 3 or 4 sized fish, one being a big one. “At least not all Dutch were as crappy as we are” we grinned. If the other teams were not catching that much either we had to come up with some idea on how to get sized fish.


fishing our asses of in hope for a strike

So what to do now? We decided the only possibility (to get in the good area’s) we had with this boat was to try to get close to some spawning area’s and then try to get the boat through in “nomoto”. Not the easiest thing, but Kari had one stiff wooden paddle in the boat. So I push-poled Hajee through a nice area. It got us on the board. One pike, just a bit over 70centimeters made us feel a little less frustrated. On the other hand, what is one pike when there should be so many? Hajee caught a small one and we felt a bit better. At least with one man poling and the other fishing we could get into some action. We came to an open place within the reedbed and we had seen a fish swirl there when we were on the other side of the reedbed. Here there could be a fish awaiting…
Hajee made a cast and after two strips we both saw the bow wave coming out of the reeds. I already knew poling and watching could be fun, but this was just awesome. The two of us where watching the streamer and there this fish came, rushing out of the reeds and with such an enormous anger it nailed down Hajee’s streamer. He was quick with his reaction and strip-striked into a solid hookup. The fish was having a ball, rushing through the reeds and I put away my pole-paddle. This was a nice sized fish and at least we could prevent a big damage on the scoring board if we would get this one on and counting. As we both hate nets I went to the bow of ship to chin the fish for my mate. And that’s when it went wrong. As soon as I got a hold of the rig and got to his bite-trace, the fish started shaking it’s head wildly. And just when I was getting an fierce neck-grip on it instead of a chin-grip it released. What a bummer!


right out of the reedbeds


subsurface, right before the streamer popped out....

I made my sincere apologies and Hajee told me it was no issue at all, those things happen. But I still feel bad about it when I look back at it. We finished of this area and we decided to boat to another shallow area and it would be my turn then. On the next two hours nothing happened. We did not see others, no sized fish. Merely no fish at all, asides from a few jacks that came up for a swirl or got to hand and released without ever leaving the water.
At about 15.00 we decided to head back to the start/finish. Maybe make some more casts near the docks, but we did not want to come in late and we both had a bit of a bummed feeling. Although we both had some action, this was not a good day for us to get into the upper regions and give serious competition to the others. On the way back…. Hell yes, good guess, we did Big Mama’s once more (like a lot of other fishing talk that sounds just horrible, doing Big Mamas...). Nothing but a skunk ;-)