The fish of a lifetime and your very first zander

Tijmen soon caught the first couple of small pike. Small, granted, but we had action, and that is always welcome on a warm day when the fish are fairly passive. It went quiet after that, and just as we began telling each other how slow it was, a colossal pike slid over Maurice's shad a meter from the boat. He managed to stay impressively calm and set the hook, after which a short fight under the rod tip followed. As soon as the fish came to the surface I slid the net under her, and we stood there for a moment taking in what had just happened. What an enormous fish.

I lifted her into the boat quickly, unhooked her and laid her on the measuring board, where the pike made a full 116 cm. What a fish, and all of it on sight and by casting. It does not get better than that. Given the temperatures and the size of the fish I held her myself and we posed together for a photo. We did not want to take any risks and wanted the pike back as fast as possible. We needed five minutes to recover, but the switch soon flipped again and we were even keener to get the first zander into the boat.

We found the zander all right, but getting them to bite was difficult. Until Tijmen saw a return come off the bottom at speed. A sharp tap followed, Tijmen struck well, and that one was not coming off. His first zander was a fact. Maurice hooked one too, but dropped it at the surface.

Mission accomplished. Catching fish was incredibly hard, but the two of them fished superbly and they caught what they came for: the zander, and the monster pike came on top of that.