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.

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.

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.

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 :-)

Dikke dame!

Today I was hesitant to go out fishing, having in mind yesterdays experience. I got up late in the morning, had a coffee and tied a streamer made just with flash material for the extra murky waters. I added a glass rattle to this one. It really paid off! After 1 hours of fishing I came to the small bridge, where I remembered I had a nice take a month ago, but lost the fish. In the third cast, while stripping, the fly became heavier, a lot heavier. The fight was on, after 5-6 minutes I had a beautiful pike with a really broad back in the reach of my hand. I had to sat on a high bank to grab her, while she decided it was not yet her time and swam away again. Another 2-3 minutes and this time I grabbed her by the gill cover. Oh my god, it was no the biggest pike in my life, but certainly the fattest! I didn't have a sling with the weight scale with me, just the measuring tape, but with 94cm she was much, much over 10kg. Quick picture and she swam away. The Dutch call these pikes "dikke dames", fat ladies.

Fishing is slow...

Difficult day today, I visited all my hotspots, no sign of any fish. Looks like they are still glued to the bottom, water is still cold. I managed to take one pike on the fly, 73cm. My casting skills are improving, I'm starting to enjoy fishing rather then focusing on making that good cats. The line with the pike WF taper casts really great. I may buy intermediate one in addition to the floating - I have a feeling I should be fishing closer to the bottom.

Ice is melting...

Finally a warm period after two weeks of -10 degrees. Ice is melting and I couldn't stay at home with that thought, so went fishing. Today I have caught one 71 cm pike on the fly. Fight was short as the water is still cold and the fish are letargic. Quick picture and jack goes happily back to the water. During the freezing cold period I bought a new line - Airflo Sixth Sense WF 7/8 with a pike taper. I'm a merely a beginner trying to grasp the aspects of fly fishing, but this line has changed my way of thinking about fly casting. It loads the rod  very quickly, which is very important for me when fishing on small canals, very often between the trees. I also picked up a tip from one of the pike fishing blogs and started to make furled leaders - this is really helping turning the fly over. So all together I had a good day: fly casting goes better and caught a fish!

Adventure begins with a broken rod tip...

I finally decided to begin my adventure with fly fishing for pike. After months (?) of researching and  three books read I ordered 9' #8 Greys GS2 rod, GX500 reel and GRXI floating and intermediate line. Of course I want to tie my own flies, so I ordered some starting materials, vice and some essential tools. All past week I was tying my first flies and started to learn fly casting on the artificial (fishless) pond next to my house. I felt ready to go out fishing. Today I went to my "hot spots" and I was not disappointed. In 15 min. I had my first pike on the fly! It was only 63cm but it felt really great. What was not great is that I broke the tip of the rod in the next 15 min... Oh my God...

Fortunately the rod has an extended lifetime warranty and I will try to get the tip replacement from Greys, however it will take a while for sure, so I'll have to go back to my old faithful casting rod.