How to combine two hobbies

Here is how to combine two hobbies - I created a drying machine for my tube flies out of the LEGO Technic blocks. The machine is remotely controlled, it has 7 speeds that allow to adjust how the glue is running (denser glue runs slower). This way I'm able to create smooth, round fly heads. It's a small detail but definitely catches the eye when nicely done. The only thing is that the noise emitted by the small electric motor drives my wife crazy, so I have to lock it in a different room.

Here is the machine at work:

On another topic - here is the last nice 93cm pike I caught during a friendly competition between members of "Poolse Vissers in Nederlands".

First pike from a belly boat

Ha, finally! Few weeks ago I bought a fish finder, today I tried it for the second time. I just started to learn how to read it. I was fishing over 13m of water and located a school of fish around 8m. I'm using now a Di7 sink rate line from Airflo, so the counting started - 37, 38, 39, 40... - this should do it, the fly should be at around 8m now.  Strip, strip, strip... bam... hooked! It was close to shore so I towed it and took a picture on shallow water. The weather collapsed just after that, so I packed all the gear to my car and finished the day on the city water, but with no luck.
 

On another topic, I found this picture somewhere in my archives, taken at the end of the summer.

Polder pike

One of my office colleagues wanted to see how is it to fish for pike in the Netherlands. He has some childhood experience with fishing, but not much really. I invited him for a session today. I thought to myself - I better pick a "safe bet" place, where we will definitely catch something, maybe not a big fish, but just anything to show him some result. I selected my favourite polder area known for the quantity of fish but not for the big pikes. After 15 minutes we were lucky to land this beautiful 78cm polder pike. This topped my personal best for the polder pike - used to be 71cm. We saw the pike following the lure retrieved at a slow pace and his big mouth opening and sucking the lure. Quite exciting!

It was also an occasion to try out a new lure - SPRO introduced a 9cm version of the Screamin Devil. It also has a new, bigger brother - 15cm, which I'm going to use on the city waters. This little lure swims amazing and to be honest some times ago I thought that I would like to have the original lure, but smaller, better suited for shallow polder water. And here it is!

Meter pike

Wow - it has been way to log since I posted anything! I did some fishing this season, but with mediocre effects. I did only one trip with the new bellyboat, more to try it out than to do serious fishing. My annual trip to Poland end up with fishing for carp with my father, as the temperature was up to 38deg! Now I'm kind of between holidays, today I spontaneously packed some minimum gear and visited old hotspots and bingo! I landed this 103cm beauty, fight was long and the fish was very strong. I had to reanimate it and for a moment I had a terrible feeling the fish will not survive. Fortunately it happily swam away. I was in a hurry to return it back so I have only one crappy photo.

Ice is out, street fishing is in!

Finally, after 3 weeks of a cold spell it got warmer. All ice melted and I couldn't wait to go out fishing again. I had  a 2hr session on the city waters today and caught a nice 84cm pike. I hope tomorrow I will also have few hours to go out again.

Modified flash tail whistler

Winter in its full here in Holland, a lot of snow (a lot for Holland anyway) and pretty much everything frozen, so no fishing this weekend. With some spare time I made another fly tying video. I slightly modified very classic pattern, the flash tail whistler, by adding big EP fibre head. The fly is meant to be fished on a floating line. The idea for the EP fibre head is to keep the fly on the surface when it lands and then sink it with the line pull. Big head should push plenty of water and generous amount of flash should work well in murky Dutch canals.

Double bunny suspending fly

After running around between street canals and polders with my fly rod I came up (not being really first and innovative) with a suspending fly. I will fish it with a full sinking line. The deer hair head of the fly will provide buoyancy and the little dumbbell eyes will counter it a bit. I found it that on shallower water and very often on short casts it's hard to sink this kind of fly, therefore I added little dumbbell eyes to counter the buoyancy. Enjoy my first fly tying video!

First pike in 2013

I just got back from a two week visit in Poland. Second day in the Netherlands and I went fishing of course. Today's score is a 75 cm pike from a 3hr session. I decided to further pursue fly fishing and try fishing from a belly boat, but It's going to cost me some money (bboat, fins, safety west, waders, shoes, maybe echo sounder). During the visit in Poland I already bought waders and shoes. I went for the "Vision" brand and bought "Kura" waders with the "Hopper" shoes. If you are looking for a fly fishing shop that has it all in Krakow, I can recommend www.hurch.pl. Now it's time to decide on the belly boat :-)