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 :-)

Winter is coming = street fishing

It is getting cold again, which means the best place for pike fishing is the... city. I had a short, but really good session today. Only 2hrs, 3x70+ fish landed and 3 more strikes. Tomorrow I'm going to the same place, but with a fly rod!

Not fishing much

I didn't spend too much time fishing lately, only few sessions, once a week maybe. Only three fish worth mentioning below, 70-80 cm. It's getting colder now, time to move on to street fishing again, I will try to fly fish for as much as possible this year.

 

Back in bussines... or not

I finally got some time to go out fishing. 3 hrs fishing along the bank of the canal and on 70+ fish. I'm about to go on my well deserved leave, probably next fishing session will be already in September.

Again, slow start of the season

I have not been fishing to much recently. I missed the first two weeks of the season since I was in Poland. Later on, every time I planned a session, the weather was not encouraging. Yesterday it was raining the whole day, but the sky cleared out in the evening. I managed to go out for three hours and land 3 pikes, biggest one 80cm. Maybe the season will pick up now.

Back from Poland

I'm back from my trip to Poland, I have spent there almost two weeks, 2/3 of that time fishing with my dad. Well, although it was a good family visit, the fishing was bad. None of the caught pikes exceeded 50 cm (!), and there were much fewer of them compared to the last year. The fishing culture in Poland (or at least in the area where I come from) is still based on taking caught fish home. The biggest fish caught this spring in the local ponds was 90cm and taken home. In the time when I was there somebody caught 86cm pike on a live bait and took it home. Unfortunately the local anglers seem not to find understanding of catch & release, all they do is finding excuses for lack of fish (severe winter, family of otters, etc...). Pity.

Now the new season in Holland is before me. It looks like I'm going to focus on fly fishing, with maybe some deviation from pike fishing to carp fly fishing. Let's see how that goes.

One more prototype

Still experimenting with mixing naturals and synthetics - maybe I'm reinventing existing patterns. This fly is tied on 4/0 hook, I started with some pearl flashabou, 4 white strung hackles, pencil thick white buck tail spun round the hook shank, some peacock herl for the back, marabou palmered around the hook shank, the head was build out of tan/white EP fibre and plastic EP eyes 9mm.

I just realized that it is only 2 weeks until the season opens here in the Netherlands - wow! I don't actually now if I'm going to be here, maybe I will go to Poland for two weeks to visit my parents, all depends on some projects at work. I think the two weeks will go by in a moment because... Diablo 3 is going to be released on May 15th, I'm a big fan of D1 and D2, I was even in a clan :-). I hope it will not conflict with my fishing.

Prototype flies

I'm exploring blending natural materials and synthetics. Both flies are similar, made out of few blends of EP fibre, peacock herl, grizzly hackles, some flashabou and EP eyes 9mm, tied on4/0 hooks. First fly has the feathers tied alongside the main body, the second one has the feathers tied outwards and I added some silly legs. Both flies are extremely lightweight and I'm looking forward to try them out once the season starts.

Mylar and rattle baitfish

I found and interesting fly design and tried to tie it myself. Mylar used in this fly is not tied directly on the hook shank, but it is sort of extension of the hook. The mylar is tied off at the end, wit addition of some glue. Inside the mylar there is a glass rattle that slides back and forth. For the main body I used white/two shades of tan/grey EP fibre. The gills are made of red craft fur. Finished with 10mm eyes and UV resin.

More pike flies

My first carp adventures didn't go very well, since my last post I went out fishing only twice, the weather still not allows sight fishing. To kill off the time I started to tie flies for my annual trip to Poland. I found an interesting tutorial how to tie hollow fly using a foam head. This fly is absolutely lightweight, the foam head will push a lot of water. I can't wait to try this on the intermediate line.

Another experiment I tried is the raccoon bunny fly, tied on 4/0 hook. From the back: piece of magnum flashabou, 5cm raccoon zonker strip, pencil thick bucktail clamp, some marabou palmered around the hook shank, finished with deer hair diver style collar and head plus eyes glued with hot glue gun.

The Banger

I decided to share some of the flies I tied. Keep in my mind that I just started with tying somewhere mid January. I start with The Banger. I think this is my favourite fly so far.

Here is how I tie it:

1. 4/0 hooks
2. Start with some flash
3. Two feathers (shlappen or strung hackles)
4. Pencil think bucktail wrapped evenly around the hook shank
5. Another two feathers same type/size
6. Some more the same flash
7. Another piece of bucktail
8. Few peacock herl to darken the back of the fly
9. Marabou wrapped around the hook shank
10. Next step is wrapping EP sparkle brush, length of 5-6cm (I really love this stuff)
11. I finish with 9mm EP plastic eyes

The bucktail is holding the profile of the fly, the eyes are quite big and add some weight to the fly, so you can almost jig it. The marabou puffs out in the water, which makes a good trigger.

Waiting for the right weather

With closed predator season I'm planning to explore carp fIy fishing. I tied myself few carp flies using EP fiber, limiting to one pattern that seems to be successful here in the Netherlands. The weather is not very encouraging, below 10 degrees during the day, windy and cloudy. This is kind of ruing my plan of sight fishing. I guess I'll have to wait for the real spring to come. I can tell you it is killing me to sit and wait for the good weather. Maybe just because there was a very short winter here and I got used to fish every weekend. The ice covered the canals for only two weeks. I'm following few blogs of guys fishing in Scandinavia, I can't imagine what they are going through :-)

End of the dutch season

This day has finally come - end of the predator season in Holland. And it was a very good season for me. I think this was a season with most of fish landed in my life. Unfortunately I wasn't lucky enough to land the magical meter, although I was close couple of times. Anyway, last day I was trying to catch a zander on a jig lure, but got bored and the fly rod was in a trunk of my car... I moved to shallower waters and landed three pikes, not very big, all 70-80 cm. I unhooked them in the water and took a picture of just one.

During the closed season I will try to chase carp on the fly, let's see how that goes. I have to say I'm really hooked on fly fishing right now, it just works very well on my shallow waters and tying flies is something that has consumed my evenings :-)