Tackle, Tactics and Experience
Going Dutch - A
fishing holiday in Holland
My account first, followed by Michel's.
Getting
Ready
Michel
Huigevoort first contacted me about the Lure Fishing UK website late
last year. He has provided an article about lure fishing in Holland and
regular pictures for the gallery. Early in the summer (of 2000) I
emailed him with some questions about canal fishing and he said it
would be easier to show me than to explain the possible answer to my
questions. So I invited him to come over here, he responded with an
invitation to visit Holland, which I accepted. His job running a
campsite meant he would be too busy in the summer but with the end of
the season he would be free in October. So we agreed on a visit then.
As
September passed I booked flights and we made the final arrangements. I
had originally planned to drive but the total cost of the petrol,
ferry, insurance, and a service for the car added up to a lot of money.
I was also not too keen on driving on the "wrong" side of the road! I
checked flights and found I could fly from Liverpool with Easyjet for
£77 return including tax, the cost of car parking added
£29 to that. So flights were booked and paid for online.
There are no tickets with Easyjet, you just turn up with your passport
and they point you in the right direction, it's one less thing to
remember.
I've
only flown once before and I get a bit nervous thinking about it, it
isn't the flying that bothers me as much as the powerless feeling I get
from having to put my trust in others. The confirmation email from
Easyjet stipulated the luggage weight and size so I was relieved to
call their helpline and be told: "No problem" when I described my
luggage. I bought a Flambeau Bazuka rod case from Harris Angling which
is an excellent piece of gear and easily accommodated the three rods
that I wanted to take. With a rucksack full of lures, reels and stuff
(weighing over 30lb and no fun at all to carry far), a little travel
bag for clothes and my Bazuka I was ready to go.
I
had been very edgy in the week leading up to my flight but I was calm
on the Saturday night before my flight, everything was ready and
double-checked. In a way I was lucky that I'd had to do four extra
days' holiday cover in the fortnight before I flew so I was too busy to
worry too much and too tired for the excitement to keep me awake for
long.
A
colleague raised the issue of safety. I was flying to a foreign
country, to stay with someone I'd never met, who I had contacted via
the internet - was this wise? He might be a mad axe murderer! Meanwhile
in Holland, Michel's friends had suggested that he was crazy to invite
a foreigner into his home, a foreigner he had not met and who had
contacted him via the internet. What if he was a mad axe murderer?
It
had never occurred to me to be worried about such things - fishing was
the only thing on my mind. Too late now! I rang Michel on the Thursday
before I flew, just to confirm all our emails. He didn't sound like a
mad axe murderer! We discussed the week ahead and agreed that we would
not try too hard but make sure we enjoyed our holiday.
The Journey
I
set off for Liverpool on the Sunday morning and arrived a couple of
hours before my flight. I checked the gear in, explained to the luggage
security people that it wasn't a bazuka (stupid name for a piece of
specialised aircraft luggage), bought a book and settled down for the
wait. The plane took off on time. A window seat and a clear sky gave me
a good view of the country and I saw The Wash as we headed out over the
North Sea and into cloud.
I
realised somewhere over the North Sea that there was one rather
important thing that I had forgotten to bring, Michel's phone number
and address. If for any reason he wasn't waiting I was in bother. The
plane was delayed a few minutes before it could land but I was soon
waiting by the luggage carousel. Two other planeloads of passengers
were in line before us. When the right luggage started to come round my
clothes and rucksack came through quickly enough, but there was no sign
of the rods. I waited, and waited, every one else had gone bar one
other bloke and we stood there very forlorn and worried before someone
came to help us. After an eternity and several calls on the
walkie-talkie a porter came in with my rod case. I hoped Michel was
still waiting, the plane has been down ages. I marched through customs,
fully expecting to be stopped but they were too busy to bother me. Then
I'm stood in a shopping mall with a few hundred people milling around.
I tried to make myself prominent and it was only a few seconds later
that a smiling Michel found me and my holiday began properly.
At
the first road junction I was terrified! To imagine I'd actually
seriously considered driving over! I'd still be sat there now, a
quivering wreck with an ever-increasing queue of cars behind me and
Amsterdam grinding to a standstill! By the end of the holiday I was
still confused at junctions, never quite sure where we were going or
where the other traffic was coming from (I'm not much different in
England, come to think about it!).
It was a journey of a little over an hour and a half to Michel's home.
A beer or two (or three or six) and we began to relax as we got the
gear ready for our first day's fishing.
Michel
had caught two nice metre-plus pike in the three weeks before my visit
so we were quite optimistic. He had also caught a perch of over 18"
while his regular boat partner had recently landed a zander of over
6kg. High hopes.
The
Fishing
Monday
We
had decided not to go mad and get too tired early in the week so we had
a leisurely start on Monday morning, leaving the slipway at about nine.
As we had loaded the boat Michel had put the landing net back into the
van, deciding we did not have enough room for it. I took it back out of
the van and said I'd look after it. He had mentioned how difficult and
dangerous it was to land fish with big ships and a strong wind on the
river, so I was keen to have it aboard.
 We set out from the marina and soon
reached the main river, the Maas.We tried jigging for zander on the
junction between the canal and the river but the flow was too strong
and we soon moved on to trolling. Michel set one rod in the rest and
held another, I decided to stick with one rod until I got used to
things and the way Michel handled the boat. I thought the Severn was a
big river but this was in a different league, and the ships!
 The ships are big, seagoing things and
some of them really belt along. Luckily the river is wide and straight
so there is plenty of room and you can see them coming from a long way
off. The fast ones leave a very big wake and the boat has to be turned
into the three feet high waves to stop them coming over the sides.
The
weather was quite pleasant, not warm but bright with broken cloud and a
nice breeze. We covered a lot of distance with a couple of stops to
retrieve snagged lures but without interruption from fish. I tried
Supershads and Little Ernies as well as smaller lures that Michel
recommended. It was obvious that my lures were not getting deep enough
because of the thick braid that I had loaded for casting heavy lures.
 It was not until
midday that Michel had a fish, a small perch on his light rod. We
turned the boat around, I swapped to the light rod that Michel had
provided and we trolled back over the fish. This spot always held
perch, but they had never taken any pike, Michel informed me, but he
thought they must be close by feeding on the perch. We hooked fish
simultaneously but mine dropped off. Two more passes produced no fish
so we decided to adjourn for lunch, pulling the boat onto the shore and
stretching our legs.
The
next plan was to motor up a dead arm of the river and drift while
casting for pike. We tried this for some time without success but the
wind was a little too strong, and freshening, so we decided to troll
again.
This
time I wanted to use the second rod. I dug out a Manns 25+ that I hoped
would dive deep enough on my thick line. I'd only had this lure for a
few days, I'd swapped it with Danny Hyde for a Bagley Monster Shad, I'd
hoped to use it for trolling this week, I don't know why I hadn't tried
it sooner.
The
lure was cast and the rod dropped into the trolling rest while I picked
up the perch rod, hoping to get one as we trolled back over the earlier
hotspot. We started to motor and Michel noticed I'd got a turn of line
around the tip of the rod in the rest. I put the light rod down and
picked the rod from the rest to turn it over, as I did so I realised I
had a fish on. It felt like a good one and Michel began to reel in the
other lines. I could feel that it was quite a heavy fish, a good double
anyway. Then I saw it, about three feet down as it turned and dived.
Michel saw it as well. It couldn't really be that big, could it? It
must have been a trick of the light! But I suddenly knew it was a very
big pike and everything sort of slipped into slow motion. It felt as if
Michel took about a year to reel in the other rods, then a couple more
to reach the net.
In
the meantime I was backing the clutch off as the pike powered away
several times. I never touch the clutch
when a fish is on, it is set and that is it, but this was not an
ordinary situation and I needed to know that it was going to give line
if it had to. I was also very aware of the big difference between a
story of a monster that got away and the picture on the wall. I was
happy that I had used my DLST Raider rod for trolling, it is very
absorbent and it just kept soaking up the pike's powerful lunges.
Suddenly
the pike was ready, Michel was there and the pike went first time into
the big net, accompanied by a joyous yell from Michel and a stunned
feeling of relief from me. We cut the line above the leader to prevent
any tangling, only the plug's head and lip were visible out of the
front of her mouth. We quickly reached the nearby shore for the
measuring, weighing and photographs. The front treble had caught behind
the first gill raker and another had nicked a loose piece of skin, very
easy to unhook but she was never going to get off.
 
Oddly
enough I was not thinking about the weight, she was so huge that it
seemed almost irrelevant and I suppose I knew that she must be a
thirty. She was 115cm long and weighed smack on 15kg, that's 46" and
33lb, a fine deep-bodied unmarked fish, almost certainly never caught
before. She was soon back in the water and quickly swam away, gone...
While
I was holding her I was astonished at how difficult such a heavy fish
was to hold properly, not the sort of thing I'm likely to get much
practice at. I am also eternally grateful that Michel has a good camera
and an eye for a photograph and he works quickly, the fine photographs
are all down to his skill.
We didn't rush back to fishing, it was just too much to take in. Words
were just wholly inadequate to describe how I felt. I yelled and
whooped a few times. We kept laughing. What a fish!
Some
kind of sanity eventually returned, we relaunched the boat and carried
on. I didn't put the 25+ back on, it was just too precious, it's going
to go into the frame with the picture somehow, leader, line and all.
I
had gone to Holland to catch a few fish, knowing I would be on a good
water with a chance of a twenty, but catching such a huge fish had
never crossed my mind. Then the sheer luck of it all struck me. Having
the net on board was kind of important, deciding to use the second rod,
having the lure that I'd swapped, picking the rod up to untangle the
tip, Michel seeing the problem, being in Holland at all, just dropping
that lure onto that fish. My contribution seemed limited to simply
trying a deeper-diving lure and using strong-enough gear. It seems like
the fishing gods had decided that it was my turn, and everything was
going to work for me. I had been complaining to a few friends over the
previous few months that I thought it was both odd and unfair that I
had never had a really big pike, significantly over the 20lb mark.
Considering the amount of luring that I've done in the last 12 years -
admittedly not always on the greatest waters - this failure had begun
to irritate me a little, this irritation was compounded by the regular
Angling Times stories of the ten-year-old child who has caught a "27",
or similar, on his second cast with a spinner! So this was pay-back
time, and it felt good. It still feels good.
Trolling back to the slipway I had a perch and Michel had three or four
as well, but everything seemed a bit wierd. I was on another planet.
We
drank plenty of beer that evening and Michel annoyed a lot of his
friends by ringing them with the news. I emailed a few friends with
some serious bragging. I kept imagining that I had somehow not landed
the fish but the alcohol and tiredness eventually overcame my
excitement and I slept well.
Tuesday
The
weather forecast for Tuesday was not good. Too much wind for safety on
the river so Michel decided we would try some of his local bank venues.
First
choice was a canal about 25 yards wide, the rain was belting down so we
parked under a bridge to unload the stuff. Then we began fishing under
the same bridge and Michel soon saw a fish, a small pike made a
half-hearted attempt at the Slapper he was trying. A little later he
landed one on a different lure. The rain stopped and we ventured out
from the shelter of the bridge and made our way along the bank. We had
no fish though.
Here I was photographed in a minefield! "Don't stamp your feet", Michel
said. There's really no danger he said. My Dutch is somewhat limited
but the word "explosiven" on the warning sign seems straightforward
enough. Apparently everyone used to fish here but a few years ago they
found some mines when they built a new road so they fenced the area
off. The fence is broken down now because it happens to be on a
well-known pike hotspot and a few mines aren't going to stop people
fishing.
We
tried a few other venues during the day without success, although
Michel lost one pike. I blanked! We parked in a carpark next to the
crematorium and when we returned the place was full to overcrowding,
obviously a popular person. Michel was not deterred from having a few
casts in a tiny drain adjacent to the car park and he nearly had a pike
as well but it missed the lure.
We
stopped for lunch in a café while the photos were being
developed. This is another act of faith, entrusting that very important
film to strangers. I need not have worried, the photos were great and
we picked one for enlargement to A4 size.
I
ended Tuesday with no fish, but it didn't seem to matter much.
We
had a good talk later about how catching the big fish had put a strange
perspective on the holiday. What do you do to follow that? You could
decide to try and get another but then if you didn't you might be
disappointed, which would be a stupid emotion to experience after
catching a monster. So we decided to relax instead. We went shopping on
Wednesday, and I'm glad we did.
Wednesday
 We visited two
tackle shops in Tilburg, both stocked more lures than you would see in
any UK tackle shop except for the very few specialist lure suppliers.
Then we travelled to Belgium and Jensen Sport at Kessel near Antwerp.
This is a big tackle shop with more lures than you would see in any
shop over here. There were also loads of rods, reels and other lure
tackle.
 Most of the lures
are aimed at zander anglers with a lot of jigs, soft plastics and small
trolling crankbaits. Jansen Sport seemed to have the entire Rapala
range on the racks. There are also big pike lures but that is only a
relatively minor interest over there at the moment. Zander tournaments
(boat fishing) are becoming popular with top prizes such as electric
outboards as major incentives. The future looks lively, although there
are many anglers with reservations about tournaments. The zander
tournament organisers seem to have the right attitude with prizes for
the biggest perch or pike as well, this latter prize encourages the
anglers to use wire leaders.
Surprise, surprise, most tackle is cheaper over there, between 20% and
50% less than in the UK, similar to American prices, and no VAT or
import duty to concern the customs of course. I saw a limited colour
range of Rapala Supershad Raps on special offer for about
£4.50! But the normal price was only about £6.
Cheap lures mean there are plenty of anglers who can afford to use
lures, which means a big turnover, which means cheaper lures, and so
on. The price discrepancy between the continent and the UK cannot
simply be down to higher mark-ups over here, the wholesalers or
importers must be charging more. I thought the free market was meant to
end all of this. If we keep having to suffer these price discrepancies
it will always keep the UK lure scene depressed and our lure suppliers
will find ever-increasing numbers of us looking oversees for our
tackle, which is already happening with internet shopping. We've seen
car prices fall to near European levels in the last couple of years,
but there must be a lot of other consumer goods similarly overpriced in
the UK, not just fishing tackle.
Provided
you had some help over there to get to the shops it would be practical
to fly to Holland or Belgium and equip yourself for nearly all your
lure fishing needs. You could pay for your holiday out of the money you
would save as well as actually being able to see and touch the goods
before buying them. The three shops I visited were all willing to talk
serious discount on big orders as well. The only real barrier is the
language but when money is being exchanged people seem to understand a
fair bit of English and sign language.
In the evening we went to visit Piet Driessen aka "The River Piker" a
sort of Maas pike guru. A real enthusiast, Rapala tester, unmarried and
with a house full of lures, fish photos and tackle. He was very happy
that I'd caught my pike, but was keen that I did not reveal the exact
whereabouts of the capture. He needn't have any worries on that score,
I want to go back!
There
isn't the sort of pressure on waters in Holland that we see here, there
is just too much water, but they dread the arrival of German pike
anglers who take everything they catch. The Maas is so big and daunting
that I cannot see too many wanting to get on it, the thought of a close
encounter with one of the big ships would make most think twice. While
at Piet's I was shown a photo of a 50" pike taken from the Maas this
year, weighing 14kg. Weights are far less important over there with
only the biggest fish seeing the scales, length is everything. A metre
(40") pike is a good one whether it weighs 15lb or 25lb. It is a bit
daft that we value a spawn-filled early spring 20lb pike more than the
same fish caught in July at 15lb. We're all frustrated matchmen really!
We made plans for a full day's fishing for Thursday, my last day. I
wanted to try jigging for zander as well as the small lure trolling
that works so well for perch. My tackle is so pike-centered that I have
to leave all my rods at home, borrowing two softer trolling rods, I
also tie a 20m length of thinner braid onto the end of my heavy stuff,
now I'll get the lures down.
Thursday
We launched the boat at dawn from a different slipway this time. The
plan is to fish three marinas as well as the Maas and the canals in
between. There is such a maze of waters that I'm surprised Michel can
find his way around but they are all familiar places to him and he's
constantly warning me that the depth of water is about to change or
that we'll we'll reach some underwater feature soon.
 Within a few
minutes of starting I'd taken a perch, then another, Michel had a pike.
Another two passes produced no more so we moved off, trolling for a
while then motoring to the first target area, a marina. Here Michel had
a few good perch but I didn't. His fish came on an outside turn around
some boats, I think my lure was just travelling too slowly on the
inside line although I lost one fish.
 
Motoring off again we fished a length of wide canal (as wide as the
Severn) Michel got a couple of pike and I had a zander, all on trolled
lures. A little while later I got another zander while Michel carried
on as before with another couple of pike. It seemed very strange but I
suppose it was just down to the different running depths of the lures.
A
trip to another marina gave Michel a small perch but nothing else.
We
tried the Maas, especially it's confluence with a canal, a prime
jigging spot. The wind was too strong to control the boat so we were
forced to abandon this idea because we could not keep in touch with the
bottom. These favoured zander spots are always on a slope and the
precise nature of the presentation means you must keep in contact with
the bottom, this is impossible if the boat is moving too quickly. This
slope preference from the zander matches my own results from fishing at
home.
A session of trolling on the Maas produced nothing and I realised it
was over 3 hours since I had a take! Michel decided we should try the
second marina again for the remainder of the day so we motored back up
the canal. This time the we found that the perch were really having it.
  We were hitting
them as fast as we could cast and turn the boat around, takes came a
little faster if the lure was slowed down then speeded back up by rod
movement. With as many as 4 hits on each pass but not always a fish, it
was very busy for a while. We both had pike, not big but respectable 70
to 80cm fish that fough very hard and were a real handful on the perch
rods.
The
perch were of all sizes between a couple of ounces up to maybe
1¾lb, most were well over ½lb.
But
the light was fading and we had to head back to the slipway with the
fish still feeding hard. These feeding bursts are quite common among
the perch apparently, it is a case of motoring around until a big
active shoal is found then taking advantage. Michel and his regular
boat partner have had over 80 perch in a day from the boat, with a few
zander and pike among them as well. Great sport.
It
was dark when we got the boat back on to the trailer and my fishing
holiday was over. We bought our dinner from the Chinese takeaway and
discussed our week.
Conclusions
The
big pike had obviously dominated the week but there was much more as
well. I had made a small contribution to Michel's knowledge with my
demonstration of big jerkbaits on Tuesday, but it is a bit too
specialised for Michel and not really suited to many of his waters. Why
fish all day for pike, risking a blank, when you can use smaller lures,
catching perch and zander with the pike coming along anyway? Lots of
the water I saw would be unsuitable for casting, the shipping on the
Maas makes anchoring or drifting a suicidal choice, trolling is the
only option.
There
is a thriving lure scene in Holland, (as well as Germany and Belgium,)
far bigger than I had imagined, fired by the fact that zander taste
nice and live-baiting has been banned. Although the German anglers are
vilified by most locals, their fishing skills are held in some regard,
it takes some ability to catch fish where the fish population is
suppressed by persistent harvest. The Maas is not fished much from
boats because it is a tricky water, big and dangerous. Bank fishing for
zander or eels with a single dead bait rod is fairly common and there
is some match fishing. There are some odd and inconsistent rules
concerning fishing as there are everywhere. Trout water fishing is
undeveloped, most of the Rainbow waters are very small (less than 2
acres) but even these turn up some big pike, invariably removed, often
stuffed! Because trout water pike are short for their weight most
anglers are not too interested in catching them, a long river or drain
pike is far more highly prized than a short heavy, artificially-fed
fish. It's not a bad philosophy really. There is a generally-held view
that our obsession with specimen fishing and weight is a bit odd, and
that we are missing out on a lot of fun. When I see the miserable faces
on photographs of so many British anglers holding their big fish I
cannot help feeling that they might have a point.
The
vast network of canals and drains all contain pike and perch with
zander in the deeper and more coloured ones. The canals are not what we
normally imagine as canals, they are often as wide as the Severn and
dredged to six metres deep to provide access for the big ships.
The
drains are usually one to three metres deep and non-powered boat access
is allowed. The flat banks means that bank fishing these waters is a
pleasure although marginal weed growth gets in the way. Most of the
pike in these small drains are small but a metre plus fish can come
from anywhere. Chub are confined to a few faster flowing rivers in the
south but sometimes they catch an ide, which looks something like a big
roach with a chub-sized mouth, from the photos that I've seen.
We
tend to look across the Atlantic for our lure inspiration, it's all
written in English after all. We would be wiser to look at the Dutch
and continental scene more closely, they are catching the same species
as us, and lots of them. There are important differences though, the
vast amount of unpressurised water, ready access to boats, no trolling
restrictions and often deep river or canal water.
Locating
fish, especially the perch and zander, seems a case of motoring around
and try different spots. Zander favour areas of deep or coloured water,
and will happily move into shallower water when the colouer increases.
That
sums up my impressions of what I learned in my few days in Holland. If
I've misunderstood anything I'm sure Michel will explain it better.
There
is a language barrier but younger Dutch people are usually proficient
in English, many Dutch words are very similar to the English equivalent
and picking up some vocabulary wouldn't be difficult. There are a lot
of good books published in Dutch as well as the excellent De Roofvis
magazine (Roofvis = predatory fish). It might pay to learn Dutch
properly and open up a new world of lure fishing, I'll be giving it a
try (I've made a start with: groot snoek = big pike).
Holland
is a nice, civilised country, the food is good and not expensive.
Flying was a doddle, Easyjet are the butt of many jokes but for
well-organised, efficient and economical transport they take some
beating. The staff were friendly and the planes were new and clean, and
they have a flexible attitude to awkward luggage. My fishing licences
cost about £15 but Michel said he'd never been checked.
And
that brings me to the end of this piece with a most appropriate mention
of Michel. To go abroad and put yourself entirely in a stranger's hands
means taking a bit of a chance - half a day in a boat can be more than
enough with some people - but we got on really well and the time flew
by without any sign of conflict. So Michel - generous host, fine
angler, true sportsman, determined guide, ace photographer, fast
interpreter, good cook, and most importantly of all my great friend,
thank you for a holiday I will never forget.
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