Ireland April ’13 part I

Finally I found the time to select pictures and write down our adventure (well part of it to start with). And an adventure it was, so here we go…

It started early on Sunday morning (1 am) when my fishing friend Koen and I rode to Calais (France) to meet the other two members of our team, Sven and Steve (so far so good) for an early check in with the four legged friend who would join us, Jimmy (officially Gypsy but Jimmy just sounds better, right Sven?). And that’s when the trouble started…

 

The veterinarian responsible for Jimmy’s vaccines didn’t fill in the papers correctly so he was not allowed to enter the UK. Luckily Sven lives at a 45 min drive from Calais, so we went back to wake the vet at 4 am to fix the problem and drove back to find out that we missed the train we booked to take us under the Channel to England.

 

On top of that, Koen and I were able to take the next train but the other guys were scheduled for the one after us. Believe me that’s not the way you want to start a fishing trip, especially because we were going to get into timetrouble to catch our ferry to Ireland on the other side of England (which we still had to cross).

Luckily some ‘Higher Power’ felt sorry for us and intervened. Apparently there was still one place left on our train and the first in line (yes our friends!) were able to join us.

That was the first time someone’s guardian angel watched over us and it wouldn’t be the last.

 

Here I took a picture of our friends on the highway trough England but it appeared that I wasn’t the only one. Some policeman in an anonymous car was following us and filmed every move we made. Which he didn’t like very much so he pulled our friends van and trailer over to confront them with a list of traffic offences.

But after a lot of convincing that the traffic laws in Belgium are very different than those in the UK, he let them go with just a warning.

 

Lucky again, but we lost even more of our precious time to catch our ferry. But guess what? When we arrived in Holyhead, we had exactly 6 min to check in and drive on to our ferry to give us our well deserved break.

 

But it seems that with ‘Higher Power Interventions’ you have to pay a price, because once the ferry hit the sea it was immediately obvious that it wasn’t going to be a pleasant boat trip. Stormy weather at sea was our price for luck so relaxing was out of the question!

 

But it all turned out ok and after a good night sleep we were anxious to get on the water. Here are Sven and Steve preparing their boat for a first attempt.

 

We wanted to try out our small ‘private lake’ first so they put the boat in the little canal in front of our house to get to the lake. Getting the boat in was no problem (out was a different story), so we were finally ready to catch some fish.

We had been in touch with some Irish guys for a couple of weeks and they all had horrible stories. It had been too cold for too long and they had seven weeks straight without rain (normally it rains one in two days in Ireland) which made the water level of the lakes drop over a meter.

 But the week before we arrived it rained so hard that the water level came back to normal but made the water very muddy. On top of that, our landlord Brian told us that one week before us five French guys rented the house to go fishing and they caught 3 pike in total in an entire week. So all that wasn’t very promising.

 

I was also curious who would handle the conditions best. Koen and I were the only fly fishermen of the group. Sven and Steve fish more conventional with lures and dead bait.

 

And they caught the first fish. Here’s Steve with his first, yes I know, it's not a very pretty way to appear on someone’s blog for the first time (but it gets better and he actually caught three in those first two hours).

Followed by Sven. Not the big ones but certainly not as horrible as predicted…

 

Especially when I caught two jacks myself.

 

Yes I posted both of them because not many will follow.

 

This is the amount Koen landed on the first lake (zero), a picture we found funny at first but was going to be a lot more contagious that we hoped for.

 

And like I mentioned before, getting into the water with the boat was a lot easier than getting out. Here’s Ken (our landlords son) pulling the van and trailer out of the mud.

 

So in the afternoon we searched for a lake that was easier to access with the boat. Normally we would have skipped this lake because there was way to much wind to fish with a belly boat.

 

But we just held on to the side of the boat so they could pull us into a part of the lake that was out of the wind (very handy if you ask me).

 

That way I was able to land another small one. Koen caught his first two fish as well but since he’s an expert in dropping his fish when you pull out your camera, I have no pictures of them.

 

And Steve caught his fourth as well.

That brings us up to 10 pike with four guys on the water, which was the largest number of pike within a day of fishing for the rest of the week (sad but true). Although they were not the biggest…

On with the blog!

My summer in the Belgian Ardennes was the first thing I wanted to post, but I have so many pictures and stuff I could write about that I simply don’t know where to start, so… nothing happens. And since I want to move on, I decided to skip it (or do a piece now and then, or… we’ll see) and carry on.

 

The last two days for example, were exceptionally warm for this time of the year (over 20° C),

so I spent my afternoons at the ‘Hawthorn’ club water, chasing rainbows.

 

And I caught very well on this type of streamer.

Just a little bit of flash, a rabbit strip zonker and a deer hair head with some dumbbell eyes in it.

I actually tied these streamers this summer for chub (with great success by the way). Here are a couple of nice ones.

But as I said before, the last two days, they worked very well on these kind of beauties.

 

Especially a black version.

Now that I have that whole ‘Belgian Ardennes’ thing out of my head, I’m able to move on, so from now on you can expect a lot more posts on a more frequent base again…

Polder pike

A post about my summer in the Belgian Ardennes will be for later, because I still have lots of pictures to process.

But this morning, I went pike-fishing in the Belgian polders with a couple of guys from my club. And since I didn’t fish for pike the whole summer, the expectations were high.

 

We found ourselves a nice little polder water and hoped for the best.

Here’s Dirk, our president,

in action.

And we got lucky, there were a lot of pike swimming around in it!

These are the best fish of the morning:

 

This is Nico with a new personal best for him, 89 cm of muscles. Well done Nico!

 

And half an hour later, I was able to land this 92 cm beauty.

Needless to say that I’m a happy man. This is certainly the best way to start pike fishing again…

Quick update

Since the opening of the pike season over here in Belgium, is still several weeks away, everything evolves around trout at the moment (that’s also the main reason why I didn’t post much lately).

 

At less than half an hour from my home, I can go fishing for beautiful rainbows at the ‘Hawthorn’ club water.

So this is the water where I spend my fishing time at the moment.

 

And this is my setup,

My favourite 7 weight, with (at the moment) a floating line, and two of these (very easy to tie) flies/streamers on my leader. I say flies/streamer, because you can fish them very slowly (imitating for example a damsel nymph) or strip them faster (like a streamer).

 

And it works very well. This afternoon for example, I was on the water for little over two hours, and I caught six of these beauties (all between 40 and 48 cm long). I lost a very fat 50+ trout as well, but it will still be there tomorrow, so…

I also bought me a new ‘fishing camera’. I say ‘fishing camera’, because that’s exactly what it is. You see, in the last two years, I broke three ‘normal’ digital camera’s. The first one fell into the water (well actually,… I fell into the water and the camera with me,… but that’s the same thing). The second fell on a rock. And the third one was ‘killed’ by the rain.

So it was time to spend a little bit more on a camera that is a little more ‘forgiving’ to us clumsy fishermen.

 

So I bought me a Nikon Coolpix AW100. It’s waterproof (up 10 m) and shockproof (up to 1,5 m), which is exactly what I needed (it has loads of other gadgets as well of course, like GPS, compass,… although I really don’t care much about such things).

I can’t say much about it yet, but I already held it underwater, which didn’t harm it (and that’s already a very good sign) and it still took nice pictures afterwards. I didn’t drop it yet, but since I only fished in a 9 m deep lake from a bellyboat, it was probably not the right time to test that anyway. When I do start to have problems with it, I will certainly post it.

 

‘Waterproof’ also means that you can take pictures under water. Which is something I had to test of course, but I still have much to learn I think, because in fact, rainbow trout don’t like posing for a camera under water (please correct me if I’m wrong). I took several pictures, but this is the only one with (part of) a fish on it.

But I’m sure it will deliver some nice shots in the future…

Ireland (5): day 5&6

 

We started our day on a private property, in ‘the garden’ of this house (very friendly people as well). It was an absolutely beautiful estate of meadows, forest and three magnificent lakes.

If I had a place like this, well, you would probably never hear from me again. I’d be vanished (with pleasure) in this beautiful Irish oblivion.

Each lake was connected to another one with a canal like this (are you starting to get my point?).

 

Here’s Lieven, trying his luck in one of them.

But I don’t have an estate like this, so I’d better stop dreaming. Besides, the fishing was poor anyway.

We split up in two groups again to try separate lakes, and the other guys didn’t even have a single bite.

 

But Lieven, Koen and I managed to catch a couple each.

Here’s Koen with one of his jacks (and that smile is definitely getting better).

 

This is one of mine on a pike imitation.

 

And here’s another one.

In the afternoon we did another lake, where we all caught several small ones, but I don’t even have a single picture of that afternoon, so it can’t have been very spectacular.

 

So we called it a day early. Besides, we still had Koen’s birthday to celebrate.

And as you can see in the picture, we still had to convince Lieven to put his jerkbait rod aside and try it on the fly.

On our last day (unbelievable how fast a week can pass), we got a little later out of bed than usual (due to certain pub events, the night before).

 

We’ve had our eyes on this water close at home for an entire week now, and it was finally deserted. It holds the Irish record bream, so there were always several guys out there trying to catch it.

But we weren’t interested in bream at all, and it’s a perfect bellyboat water, so we were happy to give it a try.

 

My pike imitation still did the trick (I only regret that I didn’t start using it earlier that week).

The other ones caught best on olive/green flies as well from that moment on.

 

No big ones, but this is already a very nice pike to catch on a fly rod.

 

On our ultimate last afternoon together on a lake, we chose the lake where I caught my personal best on the first day. And although we had a very hard wind, which made it very difficult to manoeuvre properly with our bellyboats, we all had a fantastic afternoon.

 

Here’s Gino with one of his final catches.

 

And we finally convinced Lieven to use a fly rod,… which he didn’t regret!

This is actually the only picture I have from Lieven holding a pike in his hands (so it feels kind of good that he caught it on a fly).

 

His cousin, Steven also tried something else. He decided to get away from the reeds and fish with one of my bigger streamers (which he didn’t regret either).

 

And this is my final catch. I really wouldn’t know how to end a fishing trip better than this. The fight this lady have me, is something I’ll remember for a long time. I actually missed her twice before I hooked her, but as they say,… third time lucky.

 

But all good things come to an end, so we came dripping out of the water one by one.

Here’s Phillipe after an Olympic effort to get to the shore with a very strong wind (blowing from the wrong side).

 

Gino just didn’t give up catching fish until he was on dry land (that’s a kind of stubbornness I like a lot in people).

 

This picture gives you a good idea on how we all felt, exhausted but very satisfied!

I won’t post our journey back, the day after, because it was pretty much the same as the way we got there (except we looked even more like zombies).

But I do would like to thank all the other guys (Koen, Phillipe, Gino, Steven and Lieven), for a very memorable fishing trip. We really had to work hard for our fish, and although we didn’t catch as much as some of the others did the previous years, the company made me forget all about that. Besides, I caught a lot more pike than I’ll ever catch in one week of fishing over here in Belgium!

A second thanks (to the same guys) is for using everyone’s photographs. I wish, it was this easy to compose posts like this every day,… but now I’m dreaming again.

Either way, I liked it a lot (and I hope I can do it over again soon).

Hope you liked it too…