A Quiet Days fishing on the Ijsselmere,

Like many other anglers I have been going abroad on a dedicated fishing holiday for a number of years, many anglers go to France to fish for the large Carp or to Spain for the Catfish and while I can see that such ventures would be great fun I have always been keen to keep away from the more popular destinations, for me the wide open spaces have always been a draw and there can be nothing better than being with a couple of friends out in the great outdoors with no other anglers for miles.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to have fished all over Europe for a number of species that are not indigenous to our shores, but are plentiful on the European mainland. Species like Zander and Ide may be well known to the English angler but the Asp and Vinde are probably not so well known. I have to say, a great deal of my time abroad is spent chasing these hard fighting species. In fact I have had a great many "red letter" days while I have been away but in all the years that I have fished, there is one day that stands out above all the others and it happened in September 2007 on the Ijsselmere in the Netherlands.

Holland is a bit flat and because of this wind is an important factor when it comes to planning your day, in fact to be able to fish from a boat in the bigger lakes the wind speed must be about force 2, 3 at the most, as we all know there is sometimes a difference between a forecast and the actual weather experienced so proper planning is a necessity.

When I go to Holland, I either stay with or close to my friend Marcel who owns an American Allumacraft Bass boat and a 50bhp Honda outboard which he uses for either Zander or Pike fishing depending on the season. Marcels great love is fishing for big Pike and he never misses an opportunity to get out on the big waters, however hor the first 5 days of my visit we had to put up with winds of force 4 and up so it was with quiet expectation that we were studying the internet for signs of the wind moderating. The Wednesday looked like a westerly of about force 2 and our plans were put in place.

Marcel woke me at 4-00 in the morning, Coffee and Tea was made among the single syllable grunts, at this time in the morning having several bottles of Amstel each did not seem as good an idea as it had the previous evening, a look out of the window confirmed that indeed the wind was right for fishing, you could tell by the angle at which the rain was coming down!!! Magic!!

Flasks made, we moved into the garage to prepare the boat having checked the batteries, stowed the gear and loaded the fish well with Roach, skimmers and a couple of lively Asp, we hitched up the boat onto Marcels Passat and we were off for the 40 minute drive to the slipway.

Early morning on the slipway.

Happily the rain had subsided by the time we manhandled the boat off of the trailer and after a few final checks we were off into a very grey and forbidding dawn

As a point of interest having spray hitting you in the face in sheets at 45 knots is an interesting way of overcoming a slight hangover and to cap it all as we neared the first of our fishing drifts the rain started to come down big time, as you can imagine by this time I felt that we were having a poor start to what looked at that time like a poor day.

Quiet and Tranquil among the windmills!! Wind power is still very important to the Dutch.

While fishing from a boat on the very large lakes we use two main methods one is to Jig with plastic jerk baits the other is known in Holland as The Fire Ball!

Jerk baits are available in the UK, Fox have been selling them for some time. Taking advantage of knowledge from some of the more famous Dutch anglers, I prefer to get mine from the USA. Companies such as Mann's and Lunker City have been producing them for years. These American Lures are impregnated with salt and they defiantly have the edge over those available in the UK.

American Jerk Baits The "Stinger" treble is a Dutch addition

The Fireball is a weighted deadbait mount, rigged up as an instant strike rig; to this you mount a fresh deadbait. You then simply drop the rig over the side of the boat so that it is drifting about a meter above the bottom and then using for and aft electric motors drift the boat along the "drop off's" where the bottom shelves away by keeping an eye on the depth finder. As you can imagine, this takes great skill and involves a lot of concentration as you tend to end up "feeling" for takes on one rod and watching for takes on the other.

Fireball Rig, The hook on the lead is supposed to be a little opened up!

In Holland it is illegal to use live baits so our bait was still swimming around in the bait well, Marcel selected a Skimmer and I elected to go for a ten ounce Asp, these we set at the appropriate depth and then started to fish with our jig rods.

I immediately had a strong take from a Zander on the jig rod, I played the fish for several minutes and eventually had a good look at it, the fish was indeed a Zander of about 15-16lb and just as it came to the net the bloody thing fell off the hooks, Bugger, Bugger, BUGGER!!! Oddly enough this was to be the only Zander either of us was to hook all of that wonderful day!

When you are fishing in a boat as we were, there is a lot of work that needs to be done once a fish is hooked, the man NOT playing a fish is responsible for the boat safety, for example; Are there any buoys about? Are there any large craft bearing down on you? Are you drifting into shallow water? Also all the spare rods must be removed from the water and stowed safely with no flying size 2 trebles to catch your eyes, the deck must be cleared and the fish safety mat must be in place ready for a big fish to come on board and only once all this is done can the non fishing angler get ready to help bring the fish on board.

In this case Marcel had done all the hard work and all I had managed was to muck up playing a good fish!!

So after a quick cup of coffee and a lot of swearing in two languages, we were back in the water at the start of the drift again. This time it was Marcel who was into a fish on the Fireball and my turn to sort the boat out. Eventually we had a very pretty Pike of about 20lb in the boat. it was just then that we realised that Marcel's Cannon SLR was having problems. For some reason the white shift or something technical like that had gone tits up and thus many of the images that we took that day were to be of little use!

A good fish in the boat, The mat is of a special material that helps to protect the fishes scales. The net is made of tough soft rubber.

My point and shoot idiot box (which was working perfectly well) was back on Marcels kitchen table along with several empty beer bottles! A triumph of organisation for which I am rightly proud!!!

One I prepared the year before.

The next fish also came to Marcels rod and again it was a fish of over twenty pounds. In fact to cut a long story short, we had a total of 18 fish in the boat that day, the smallest was 15lb, 11 were 20lbs and over of which most were big 20's and two other fish, one to me of 32lb and one for Marcel, taken on the biggest Pike lure( a jointed plug, convincingly mad that I have ever seen, his fish went to 34lb.e to look like a rainbow trout of about a pound and a half)

Back to fight again. The Dutch are VERY protective of their predators

Both of these fish were taken in a small marina where we stopped off to stretch our legs, I took advantage and set up my little stove to make fresh (Tea for me and Coffee for the Dutchman), while I was waiting for the kettle to boil I dropped my Fireball rig under a small yacht and Marcel went off to fish his new Trout plug.

At last the rain has stopped! A rainbow over the marina where we found our pot of gold!

Once the drinks were made I sat down in a handy garden chair to enjoy my drink when I noticed that my rod tip had given a slight knock, I lent forward and picked up the rod only to feel that something had indeed taken my Skimmer, I struck and a very heavy fish started to run right under the boats, all I could do was plunge the whole rod under the water and hang on as hard as I could. To my amazement the fish came willingly and I assumed that it was not as big as I first thought the fish then moved into open water in front of the yacht to my left, I slackened off the pressure as it was in open water. It turned out to be a bit of an error as the fish then took advantage of my good nature, it came up to the surface and tail walked for about ten meters all the way across the yacht basin, mouth open, shaking its head just as hard as it could!!

The only image that could be used from that memorable day!!

It was the most impressive thing I have ever seen a Pike do, from then on it hardly seemed to be in the water at all, jumping and thrashing at what seemed every opportunity, eventually Marcel grabbed the fish and we hand landed it into the boat where we had all the gear ready to remove the hooks.

About half an hour later, marcels plug was taken by his own big fish. Again this fish tail walked a lot, frightening one of the boat owners out of his skin as this fish, which was well over a meter in length jumped right out of the water so that the whole fish was a meter above the surface before it crashed back in side on. it made the sort of slash my spaniel makes when he jumps off the high bank into the island lake.

This fish was magnificent and we were very annoyed when it turned out that not one of the pictures of this beautiful creature came out.

One Marcel prepared earlier!!

We packed up and headed home in the early evening, not because the fishing had slowed up because it had not but rather because after clearing away the decks so many times and manhandling so many big fish, we were absolutely knackered and physically unable to continue. Within an hour of returning and putting the boat away, we were both lounging at either end of Marcels big settee, heads back, mouths open, snoring and dreaming. Not of Pike, I am sure because for once we had actually lived the dream!!

Tight Lines

What our pictures should have looked like

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