Wether one can call 4 years a tradition or not, targeting Dutch pike at the Polders has become a yearly thing for us at Rodtrip.
But this years meeting was a bit special in a way. Special because about half of the team wasn’t able to make the trip (renovating houses, making babies or making time for your family can sometimes be as important as fly fishing) and double special because the fishing conditions were never this bad.
A cold north-east wind and sunny blue skies have never been on any pike anglers list of wanted weather, and we had it the whole weekend a gogo. But it takes a hell of a lot more to keep us and our smiley fishing faces away from any waterfront!
The reason why the Polders are world famous for pike fishing is the huge number of fish one can catch in a day, even under less prosperous conditions. But this time it quickly turned out that bad fishing weather would keep the numbers away – even in pike fishing heaven.
The few fish we did caught were remarkably bigger than the past years though (80cm – 84cm – 89cm – 94cm…), yet fish wasn’t active at all, meaning you really had to push them with numerous strips round the same possible hideout to persuade them to take the fly. (Take – the – fucking – fly, bitch.)
This kind of fishing is a bit of a problem in Holland, since the number of possible hideouts (bridges, junctions, pontoons, water plants or reed, and even more bridges, junctions…) is so big even a lifetime is too short to fish them all.
On top of that you really had to search for the right fly together with the right way of animating it. Our most successful patterns turned out to be the more natural imitations, since the relatively clear water didn’t need no flash – except for the end of the day sessions.
Ah.. End of the day. With cold blue hands and frozen faces it can be some kind of relief to make it to the end of the day. At that point our comfortable rental apartment was the only hideout we needed, a sanctuary where the real tradition is kept alive, doing what we all love most besides fishing: eat homemade hamburgers, drink our favourite beers and make fun of Mathias. And of course, tie the patterns that will definitely turn our luck the next day…
Because even though the fishing was far from easy, there will be a fifth Rodtrip weekend at the Polders, for sure! Hasta la tradición, simper!
