Still alive!

I’m still in the Belgian Ardennes (until the end of the month) and finally, I have an internet connection, but it works so slow that I can hardly do anything (working with pictures is out of the question). They are still testing the system, and they promised me that it will work as it should soon.

And what about fishing? Well we’ve had a terrible summer here so far, cold (around 15 degrees Celsius), with hardly any rain. So the water level is very low (kayaks have been prohibited for several weeks now), with water plants everywhere you look, so I mainly concentrated on trout and chub on a dry fly (with various success). I’ve tried fishing for pike with flies with weed guards, but the weed just gets stuck on the swivel and the head of the fly. I’ve also tried poppers, but due to the current, they’re very difficult to retrieve.

But it’s still great to be here, living outdoors and making new friends!

I will certainly post more when the internet works at full speed (or even half speed).

I’ve also received a lot of emails, and I’m very sorry that I was unable to respond, but I promise that I will answer every question once I’m able to…

Tying to ease the mind

 

After two weeks of doing things that made me stressful and down, I was finally able to tie something. And I must say that it felt really good! I struggled a bit with what I wanted to tie (I still have to tie a lot of dry flies and nymphs), but, because it has been a while since I’ve tied a pike fly (and that is the kind of tying that I get the most satisfaction from), the choice wasn’t so difficult after all. I just tied me a couple of ‘Lonesome Tom’ patterns that I can use in the river Semois. They’re not to big (about 12 cm), tied on a TOF SS-1930 INOX, size 3/0.

White/pink and

white/chartreuse.

Ezine update

I know I’m a bit late, but here they are anyway. Just click on any image or check them out with the other ezines on the right.

 

The new “Flymage Magazine”.

 

The new “This is Fly”.

 

The new “Sleeping In the Dirt”.

100% RELAX

There’s nothing that makes you feel better than living outdoors for a while. I got home a couple of days ago and I’ve been very busy since, so I already want to go back, but that won’t be before another (demanding) week and a half. But here’s already something about my last trip.

 

This is what it’s all about of course, catching trout.

I won’t post a lot of pictures of them, because they were all between 25 and 30 cm, and they all look the same.

 

Except for the different way they are speckled.

 

I also have to say that I didn’t fish as much as I intended to. Sure, I’ve fished every day, but only in the evening. The rest of the day was purely relaxing, reading, enjoying nature and silence, and most of all tying flies (I’ll do an other post later on my most popular ties of the moment), and watching this family of swans (with 7 chicks!) who visited me a couple of times daily.

 

We are still only aloud to fish from the river bank in Belgium (until June 4), so I intended to fish in France, but this has been the warmest springtime since 1893 (and an extremely low water level), so all of the hot spots that I knew were totally covered with flowers.

 

And I am proud to present my pupil, Kylian Colmant, seriously infected by the fly-tying virus, and a natural talent to cast a fly rod. He visited me a couple of times a week to tie flies and learn how and where to cast them.

Even his twin sister Marion came along now and then, to give it a try (of course, all of her flies had to be pink).

 

And afterwards we had to test the flies of course.

I can guarantee a lot more pictures like this in the future, because he is a real natural when it comes to casting a fly, and we have big plans together for all kinds of species… 

New BloodKnot Magazine

 

I’ve missed the launching of it, but here it is anyway. Just click on the image.

I especially liked the article by Andy Buckley,

called ‘NZ & MONEY’.

I have a lot of respect for people with that kind of attitude!

And I was surprised and happy to see an article by Erin Block, called ‘The Frugal Fly Fisherwoman’.

I recently found her own blog, and I was immediately hooked. The way she is driven in all aspects of life (including fly-fishing) and most of all the way she is able to put it into words, just kept me reading. A lot of fly fishermen want to share their adventures (including me), but writing about it is something completely different.

Just check out her blog here and see (and read!) for yourself.

Quick update

I got home yesterday, for Mother’s Day and a fantastic concert in the evening by Karsu Dönmez. But tomorrow, I’m off to the Belgian Ardennes again.

 

Last Tuesday, my parents accompanied me to set up my new home for the next couple of months. No way that I could have accomplished this all by myself.

This is me and my dad, figuring out how to set up my new tent.

 

And little by little it all started to take shape.

 

So this is it, my new home and base camp for some wonderful fishing.

 

Even when I was not fishing, that chair was very hard to get out of. In fact, I’ve enjoyed every second of just sitting there (or reading and tying flies), the last week!

 

Fish and fishing stories, will be for a next post.

But I can already say that this mayfly is a real killer at the moment.

The camping owner has guarantied me that I will have an internet connection before the summer. That way, I will be able to update my blog daily again…  

Ready to go

I’m fully packed and ready to go (in fact I’m a bit over packed) because, tomorrow, I’m off to the Belgian Ardennes again. This time it will be for a couple of weeks, although I’ll return home, now and then, for a couple of days (mother's day, a couple of concerts, laundry,…).

It’s possible that I’ll have an internet connection this time, but I’m not sure. So if you don’t hear from me in a while, that means I’m having a great time, and a lot to post when I get back…

Catch Magazine, new issue

 

There’s a great new issue of Catch Magazine out, with an article by Simon Graham.

Just click on the image.

Catch & release, or not?

As I was looking trough some pictures I took along the water, the last couple of years, I came across this one, and it made me think.

This picture was taken a couple of years back, when I was still convinced that you had to fish for pike with lures and stuff like that (luckily I tried it on the fly one day).

Either way, ‘once upon a time in Belgium’, I came across this very sympathetic guy, when I was walking along the water. He was standing up to his ankles in the water, although his shoes and trousers were not designed for it. 

Then he landed this pike in a much to small net, with a rod I thought would break any second. And the moment he lay down the net on the ground, and saw his 7cm Rapala (with two treble hooks) disappeared into the mouth of the pike, he started to pull the mouth of the pike open with his fingers. Of course I intervened, and to make a long story short, I had to cut both of the treble hooks into pieces with my pliers to save the pike (the main reason why I never use treble hooks anymore) and it swam off very lively, which made us both feel good. I gave him two new treble hooks, and he started right away asking what kind of material and tools he needed to fish and unhook pike safely. Because, next to the euphoria of catching a beautiful fish, his immediate concern was to put it back as quickly as possible.

Now, this is a good story, which gives me hope for the next generation of fishermen, but unfortunately this kind of event is very rare.

‘Once upon another time in Belgium’, I came across this very sympathetic older guy when I was walking along the water, who was drilling a 96 cm pike, and I landed the pike in my net. But the moment I put the net on the ground, he pulled a rock out of the ground and smashed the pike’s head in.

When I asked him why he killed it, he said that he would take it home and take a picture (for his collection), show the pike to his neighbour (who’s also a fisherman), and then throw the pike in the garbage, because ‘still water pike’ tastes like mud (because of the low oxygen level). Besides that, this was his favourite place to fish for roach, so any pike was unwelcome in this area.

I can guarantee you that I used my most colourful vocabulary to say how stupid he was, but he just looked at me as if I came from another planet. This is a phenomenon I’ve witnessed with a lot of older fishermen, and it’s very hard to get people think differently about pike.

 

Its obvious that I promote ‘catch and release’ for pike in Belgium. I put all of them back, big or small. And there’s hope, I heard (from a reliable person) that the laws concerning pike will be changed next year. The pike season will be two months longer, but every pike caught (no mater what size) has to be retuned into the water immediately, for the next five years.

 

 

But what about other species?

When I was in the Belgian Ardennes the last time, I caught trout almost every day. But in the 12 days I was there, I only took these two with me for diner (32 and 28 cm). I like to eat a trout from time to time, and it’s ridiculous to buy them in the supermarket if you can get them fresh out of the water. But it did make me think about it.

On this part of the river Semois, you can only catch trout in springtime and you’re only allowed to fly-fish. And hundreds of kilos of fish are put into the river (like you see on the picture), so that people are able to catch them.

So it’s more like folklore, because most of the guys over there are barbel fishermen, and only touch a fly rod in springtime to catch and kill trout, to fill their freezer, and make their wife happy, which compensates for the expenses of their barbel fishing, the rest of the year (I think).

All this got me very conflicted. Every trout I caught and put back into the river was almost certainly killed by the next fisherman who came along. So did I put them back with hopes that they would get away and reproduce, or to give the next guy a nice barbeque?

The only reason that there is still trout to be caught, is by all the money people pay for their permit (which is used to buy and release fish), but the same people kill every one of them as well. So do you have to make people pay to fish for trout and send them to the supermarket to be able to eat one?

I struggled with that question for a couple of days, and then I had a visitor. This 12 year old boy heard that I tied my own flies, and one evening he arrived at my tent with his bicycle. I will never forget his first words: “Hi” he said, “I’m Kylian, and I’ve been fishing all my life”.

I was immediately charmed by the kid, and we had some long talks about fishing every evening for about a week (because every evening he arrived at my tent with all kinds of questions).

Anyway, at a certain moment he said something like this to me: “It’s not fair, because all those older guys fish with big and expensive rods, catch all the trout and kill them all. And then they wonder why young people don’t fly-fish. The few ones that I do catch, I measure them and only take the reasonable sized ones at home. They have to put smaller sized fish in the Semois, which everyone is obligated to put back into the water. This way they can reproduce and give us youngsters a chance to learn how to fish.”

I don’t know if these were his words (I think his older brother is teaching him), but it did make me feel pretty stupid, because he hit the nail on the head! Use the money to build up an ecosystem that’s good for both fish and fishermen.
Of course, an other big problem in Belgium is the fact that there is no supervision. In all those years I’ve fished there, I’ve been checked just one time!

I really hope there are more Kylians in the world, because they are the next generation and they can make a difference! 

Music for the soul

No matter what certain people say, fly-fishing is not the only good thing for the soul in the world. Let’s say that on a scale from 1 to 10, fly-fishing is 11. But for me, music, is at least 10 as well.

When I’m fishing though, the last thing on my mind is music, because the sound of nature is the best soundtrack at that moment. But any other time, I barely do anything without music.

Whether it’s Billie Holliday to wake up and check my mail, or Metallica to drive my car (although it’s Booker T and the MG’s at the moment), Rage Against The Machine to clean up the place, Marvin Gaye while I’m cooking (I can’t help it, I like to sing when I’m fixing a meal), or some old school reggae like Burning Spear to take a shower (an early Miles Davis works great too).

I pretty much described my day here, except for one thing.

Tonight I went to the third concert in 12 days, and each of them was memorable. Three different styles of music on three different locations, but I left three times with a big smile on my face.

 

The first was the “Boban I Marko Markovic Orkestar”, which was a genuine Balkan party.

This is Marko playing his trumpet like an AK47.

 

The second was “Intergalactic Lovers”, the new stars in the Belgian rock scene.

This is Lara Chedraoui, the girl behind it all.

 

And last but not least, tonight we went just across the border to France (which is only a 45 minute drive) to see James Blake.

Some call him a prophet in today’s music, others say it’s just a hype, but I can guarantee you that I saw an artist at work that is certainly worth following the next couple of years, because this kind of talent is very rare. The combination of very slow and very low beats that make your trousers look like your national flag in a tornado, in combination with a 60’s golden soul voice is unseen before, and a joy to witness.

And thanks to my good friend Ruth for taking these pictures, all the laughs and great moments!