It’s a warm friday evening mid July when we arrive at the famous reservoir ‘De Ronde Bleek‘, known all around the low lands for it’s incredible stock of huge rainbow trout.
After the usual super friendly meeting with owner and manager Jan, we decide to get ourselfs a warm meal to make a good start of this weekend we’ve all been looking forward to for a long time.
Jan sends us to a local café, but since they just closed the kitchen, we decided to drive up to Eindhoven, only 10 minutes away. There we literally walk into the very active nightlife scène with an excellent vibe, but the call to fish early and get some sleep is too strong, maybe next time…
We wake up at 5am to start fishing an hour later. The last couple of weeks had been hot and dry, making the fishing more difficult by the day. We didn’t expect that our rainbow friends would be playing ball, but a quick glance outside and the first raindrops hit the window of the domain’s appartment. Luck could be on our side…
After a generous breakfast provided at the time we had chosen, we met Mark, an Australian guy on a mission in Germany. Since it was about 2 years ago that he had been flyfishing, Jan asked us if we could get him started.
Rob, the local specialist of The Ronde Bleek, showed up and guided him towards a spot close to the border of the lake, where he knew big fish was gathering. To make a long story short, Mark took 9 bows that day, of which two larger than 70cm !
The rest of us took out the pontoons towards deeper water. But as the morning progressed, we realized that it was going to be a scratching weekend. We tried various techniques but didn’t find the trick to get contact with these gigantic trout.
Chironomids, streamers, blobs and small nymphs on fast sinking lines, intermediates, floating ones. The seldom rise we spotted was answered with presentations of small midge pupa imitations, but none of it seemed to be working.
After lunch we went back and Jeremy and Mathias went to a spot close to where Mark had been fishing. They were quickly taking fish now, all on a light nymphing technique. Johan and Romain joined in the game and took quickly some really cracking trout, well into the 70ties.
Fighting these monsters takes a lot of energy, so after a succesfull day the overwhelming smell of heaps of food on a barbecue brought us back to Jans house.
Toghether with two German guests we spent the night tying and enjoying the semi final of the World Cup Football. Excellent schnapps and beers were exchanged, flies were tied and new friends made.
On Sunday Only Jeremy and Johan were able to get at the water at 5am.
It was sunny and warm again, giving us not too much hope for better fishing. Nevertheless Jeremy was able to land one good fish on a nymph, and another one on a streamer. After wondering around the large lake, we decided to take a look at the surrounding creek.
The water in this creek was christal clear an not too deep. Very soon we spotted trout, hoovering around. This called for sight fishing with light nymphs, which was a great change to the big reservoir. We all caught some Nice trout, all in for a hard fight like we are only used to when encoutering wild fish. What a great shape they’re in!
Rob and Vincent Derks from 0031.flyfishing.com joined us, but the weather only became warmer and sunnier, so we knew the afternoon would be hard as hell to catch fish. We called it a day way too quickly, comforting ourselfs with the thought that we will be back in a few months to meet these giants in better conditions.
Nevertheless this weekend made it clear that De Ronde Bleek is one of the best reservoirs to target for large rainbows!
