The worst pike season in history

Expectations where high, because it hadn’t been freezing for a few days, and the ice was melting, BUT…

Yesterday I was in the Belgian polders, because there is some current on most of the waters there, but… where the ice was gone, the water looked like ‘caffe latte’.

Then I got a call from Koen. He was on his way too, and he knew a promising water not so far from where I was. So hope was flickering again, but… there wasn’t a single fish to be seen!

 

This is Koen ‘urban fly-fishing’ for lots of weed and braches.

So today I planned to stay closer to home and check out the waters in a 30 km radius with Dimitri (and Koen, but his hangover decided differently), but…

The first water, there was still a lot of ice, and the few open spaces didn’t produce a single bite.

 

This is Dimitri fishing an open space with his ‘rubber frogs’ (or whatever they’re called).

On the second water, we each had some pike following our fly (in my case) or other ‘stuff’ (in Dimitri’s case), but… not a single bite.

I searched for some other waters (because I didn’t want to give up), but…

 

ice…

 

ice…

and a lot more ice (but I won’t put anymore pictures on, because this post is already depressing enough!).

And the ice on these waters is so thin that it should be gone in one or two days, but…

the temperature will drop below zero again tonight, and won’t go above for at least another week.

So, this must be the worst pike season in history.

There is one bright side on this weekend though… I got to test a lot of flies!