Back for round two

After a run of very hard days I was a little apprehensive about what this one would bring. Put mildly, the fish had been switched off for days. Finding them was not the problem, getting bites was. Because of the forecast I decided to take a different river. A gamble, since I had not been there for a while, but it was a risk I was willing to take with Raymond and Dennis.

We started on a spot where you can usually catch an asp or an ide, and it did not take long before a thick ide lay in the net. We continued our drift and in quick succession Dennis landed a pike just short of a meter and a hefty perch, both on a shad meant for pike. I had not expected a flying start like that.

The bites dried up hard and we worked spot after spot without result. I had one place left in mind where there is genuinely always something to catch. If it did not happen here, that would be that. Dennis soon caught a small pike. Just as well, because it was quiet, far too quiet.

We decided to go back to the spot where we had started that morning. Here too we barely got another touch, until Raymond's shad was grabbed right in front of the boat by a good zander. So we ended up with quite a few species in the boat, without ever setting out for them. The river keeps surprising you, even on hard days.