August 13nd, 2005

So, I've been lucky before and now I've been lucky again! It has been a rough and rainy week but the weather forecast did not look too bad so I planned a day fishing in my beloved stream with my German friend Ruediger. Ruediger is doing a lot of work for the little club who owns the fishing rights of this river. Actually, he's been so involved that he had hardly any time to do some proper fishing himself.... So we called (and e-mailed) each other and decided to have a go.

Casting....

On Friday there was quite some rain over the area and it was going to be tricky. I was keen enough to take the gamble so on Saturday morning I got into my brand new Citroen C4 and drove the 220 km to Bonn, where Ruediger lives.

Around 09:30 I arrived in Bonn and the weather was just perfect for fishing. Cloudy but no rain and a temperature around 18 Celsius. After a quick cup of coffee we loaded up my car with Ruediger's stuff and off we went. In the meantime Ruediger's brother, Stefan joined us and although he's not such a keen fly fishermen as we are it was nice to have him around. 20 minutes later...hhmm, a first look across the water when we drove along the banks did not promise a good start of the day. Brown water! Damn.... But as I said in the beginning; we were lucky again. When we drove all the way upstream the water became more and more clear. We could fish!

The morning started very, very slow. We did not touch a single trout or grayling for he first 2 hours.....

The result!

Tringgg...tringgg...Ruediger's mobile phone rang; Stefan called to tell us that he just caught a big fat rainbow trout of about 50 cm. That is NOT good for morale! I HATE the fact that we have those damn mobiles with us all the time (by the way, I turn my phone off during fishing) but having an absolute beginner calling about a trophy fish he just caught (while you have caught nada, nil, nope, zilch) is just the worse thing I can think about!

Anyway, things picked up later on, as we expected. The water quality got better and better and so did the fishing. After a delicious stream side lunch (finished off with a fine cigar) the weather was just perfect. Stefan left us (because of major problems with his back) and Ruediger and I went off to explore the lesser known areas of the little stream. Sometimes we had to FIGHT ourselves through the weeds and the shrubs but it was worth it. We caught many beautiful wild trout in top condition. We fished the little pools together, each taking turns and it was fun. Around 20:00 hours we decided to call it a day. We had a cool pint of beer in our favorite local pub ("kneipe" in German) and agreed that we have been lucky. Lucky to be able to fish this little stream, lucky with the weather and lucky with having each other as friends.

August 5th , 2005

This is ridiculous.. I've been fishing quite a few times in my small beloved river this summer but I failed to write about it. No wonder I have had complaints from faithful visitors to this website! This is no good....I need more discipline and write, write, write. But every time I come home in the middle of the night after a day's fishing, tired as a

streamside lunch

dog and the next day (usually a Sunday) is full of family tasks and other stuff. Monday it is back to the office and before I

know it an other week has gone... Sometimes I have this feeling that life is like a freight train with no brakes on a fast journey to nowhere. During the last couple of months I found a new job and we moved into our new house so it's not that I've been sitting still...:-)

OK, it is fun riding that train but sometimes, just sometimes I like it to stop at some remote station so I can get off and do nothing for a while. But than again, doing nothing is not really my style... Hhhmm, I guess I'm rather full of contradictions. So please forgive the large jump in dates because I do realize that that's what I have to call going from the middle of April to the beginning of August.

Anyway, back to the fishing!! It was quite a good summer so far. Not for the sun lovers, at least not in my part of Europe, but definitely for the TROUT lovers. We had plenty of rain at regular intervals so the rivers stayed up. I like rivers to hold plenty of water and I think most fish feel exactly the same because they were biting like crazy, Every time we went to visit my little

My old pal Barry

river we caught plenty of fish. And not just any fish! I can't recall catching so many fat brownies and rainbow trout. Nobody seems to know where the rainbow trout are coming from this year but the little river is suddenly holding quite a few of those American fighters! Wow, it is fun to hook a rainbow trout every now and than because they have this tendency to JUMP. Yihaa!

Just the other day I went with my old pal Barry and some other good friends. .Barry and I haven't fished with each other for at least a year because he moved "up North" and we were both quite busy with other stuff. But finally we did manage to line up a nice day of fishing and a nice day it was. The group split up and met again for a wonderfull streamside lunch. Many jokes were told and quite a few glasses of whine were drunk. I guess life is what you make it...:-) At one moment Barry decided

a nice surprise!

to stay in the car for a while because his back was killing him. He's a very tall lad and has had problems with his back for quite a while. I walked down to a little pool below a bridge. I didn't expect much, there was one small run in that pool though which looked promising.

I dropped in my little nymph and BANGG!!! I hooked into a big fat rainbow trout. He jumped two, three times and my little Mohlin reel was screaming. Yes! I called Barry so he could make a photo and I was in the right position for him to make one. It took a while for him to realize it was me who was calling him because I was hidden behind some bushes. I think the fish was between 2 and 3 pounds which is a really big bugger for this small river. I was double lucky for having Barry around to make some good photo's. Perfect, just perfect. I was a happy man.... That evening I smoked an extra cigar to celebrate the good fortunes. Actually we had two or three more days like this again so I have nothing to complain about. The fishing Gods have been kind to me....!

Opening day in Germany! It's been a long time since I went fly fishing on an opening day. It's too cold and the trees are just too bare for my liking. Normally I wait until mid May or so, I like nature to be ready, if you know what I mean.. Anyway, this year a couple of friends got together to fish the opening day in Germany and asked me to come along. The river Kyll (in the Eiffel mountain range) was going to be our destination and I thought; "what the heck, if the fishing is poor the great company is worth the trip anyway". And it was.

German Eiffel in the morning

Cold it was as well :-) Pfff, the water temperature was only 6 Celsius! Even too cold for a beer! The first morning was somber and wet (and cold, but I already mentioned that) and I was glad that I decided to wear LOTS of clothes including a heavy duty raincoat. On the downside, I discovered that my 12 year old waders are really ready for replacement.. Luckily I was wearing a couple of long johns (thermal underwear) which managed to keep me at least a little bit warm. I was close to teeth shattering though.

Anyway, I decided not to waste too much time walking along the river bank. I spotted a nice deep pool close to the hotel. The bank was steep as hell so I had to slide down, hoping not to keep sliding and end up in the river. It was quite a struggle but I managed and soon I was waist deep in the ice cold water tossing my very heavy leaded nymph upstream. It was only the third or fourth cast which brought me into a beautiful fat Grayling. That was a good start!

I kept on catching beautiful Grayling and some nice brown trout as well. Man, I was lucky and happy! I guess I caught between 8 to 12 fishes and ended the morning with a record Rainbow trout. This guy (I know it was a guy because when I held him in my hands he started loosing loads of sperm :-) must have been around the 3 pound mark! Wow and wow again. What a big fish for such a small river. Of course these fish are stocked and not the real McCoy but heck, it was a good fight!

Time to hoist myself out of the river...I was just getting too damn cold. A brisk walk warmed me up and I managed to locate some of my friends fishing upstream of me. They have had quite a good morning as well although it was clear they did not catch the number (or size) of fish I did so I guess that first pool was just a "pool of gold". (Which we found out later was true since some of my friends caught a good number of fish in the same pool later that day.) Time for a nice lunch at the local Italian. It's a really nice little restaurant overlooking the river and I enjoyed a great Calzone pizza. It was good to warm up!

Later that afternoon we decided to fish all the way downstream. It is a lovely bit of river I must say but the fishing was slow. I did not expect anything else since the water was so cold. All in all I managed to hook a couple of brownies, it was just lovely to be fishing and to have nothing else on my mind. I walked a lot and looked a lot around. Had a chat with a river keeper about the river. He told me this particular stretch of river has been in bad shape during the last couple of years but that they (the local club) are finally getting things back the way they are supposed to be. Fewer licenses (and therefore fewer fishermen) and better stocking policies. No rainbow trout, only brown trout and grayling.

Evening was fun, having dinner with fishing friends is always fun. Fishing tales, wine and cigars (for some of us). The weather turned really nice and the next morning was quite bright. I fished a couple of promising pools downstream of the hotel but the fishing was extremely slow, I guess I caught 4 or 5 medium sized trout and 1 grayling. It didn't matter...I was standing in a nice river casting my line. Birds were singing and the sun was shining. Who can ask for anything more? After lunch we left for Holland. It was a lovely break and a good start of the season.

Suddenly it struck me (again) that I have done a lot more fishing and that I have failed to update those fishing notes... Damn, it is so hard to keep up with things. Currently I am up to my neck in 3 or 4 projects and there are just not enough hours in a day. I

Gert casting his streamer..

guess I'm not the only one with this problem.... I can see that quite a few people visit (and hopefully read) those pages so I know I have to keep updating stuff so you won't get bored by seeing the same content again and again.

Pike fishing season has started again! So I quickly tied a few new streamers and called my friend Gert to see if he was up to some proper pike fishing... What a surprise...he was... So we agreed to go on Thursday and the weather was just perfect. Not too cold (about 14 Celsius) and hardly any wind. The only problem that morning was the bloody traffic on the A2 motorway. Damn traffic jams, I'm really fed up with them sometimes, especially if I'm going fishing!
It was going to be a short fishing day because we had to leave early. (Gert had to do some kind of presentation later that day, hey a guy has to do something to finance his hobbies.) Anyway, we arrived around 11:00 hours at this farm I know through my old pal Rob Vermij. God, I wonder how he's doing...haven't talked to him for ages and I've lost his mobile phone nr. I HAVE to get in contact with him soon.
The farm looks a bit sad nowadays. Almost everything is dirty and old, including the farmhouse itself. Cracked windows and stuff like that. It is obvious that this farmer is not motivated any longer. Who can blame him with those damn Dutch bureaucrats? After a while I found the farmer's father who was doing some stuff with a broom which didn't make any sense to me... But I guess that's what really old people do sometimes... He found

A nice fish...

the farmer's wife and after a brief chat we gave her some small change to get access to the land. Gert was really curious and when we came around the corner he loved it. It IS a lovely old polder with loads and loads of wildlife. We saw thousands of ducks and geese and in every field we bumped into some big fat hare. Wow, those guys can run!

After a small sip of Gert's hip flask (I forgot which whisky he had in it but it was bloody good) we set off for a short hike to the "back" of the polder. The wet fields sucked our boots in but we didn't care because the water looked ever so promissing. We started fishing at this lovely old bridge and within 15 minutes Gert was into a good pike! As a matter of fact, he hooked it almost in front of my feet after he made a nice long cast from the other side of the canal. Good for him!
I turned into a shallow side canal and suddenly a really big pike (I think it was about 85 cm, which is quite nice for a Dutch polder) came after my streamer. I looked straight into it's big, big mouth and I was so surprised that I forgot to set the hook.... After one mighty shake of its large head the streamer came flying out..... Damn! My legs were trembling...that was fun!

Anyway, to keep a long story short; all in all we caught about 8 pike together. I had 3 and Gert caught the rest and some really nice ones too! (So yes, Gert out fished me...:-) And all this in less than 3 hours fishing...not bad, not bad at all. So Gert was a very happy man and we agreed to return soon. It was a fine -short- day's fishing.