12 april '09

The day started like any other morning. Only this day could be the day. The sun was shining the temperatures rose. All these things made my hopes rise to a new height. I waited until the afternoon to start fishing. 3 o’clock, the moment to start fishing was finally there. When I arrived at the lake I had the freedom to chose where to fish. Nobody of the local anglers were there, I couldn’t believe my eyes, a day like this and no soul to see on the banks. All that freedom which swim to fish? After a few seconds I had my mind set up to fish at one of the ends off a small canal that links two pools together. The wind direction was very good for that swim, but my dad had other plans. We talked things over I decided to go his way to one of the pools and not in the canal. I was very sceptic over his choice but I wanted to try and see what the results would be. The fear of a blank day was realistic and the hope of banking carp was falling and turning into fear.

Fear turned in to hope

After an hour or two we saw that the fish were playing in the lake. So our hopes of catching carp were rising once more. The fear still wasn’t gone and my thoughts told me that the canal swim was the better option. That was until the carp showed themselves, two big carp rolled on top of the surface right on my swim. At the same moment my fear of not banking any carp was gone. During the next hour we didn’t see any more carp but every other fish in the lake was playing below the surface like kids at playtime. All my sceptic thoughts about the swim where long forgotten. The hours past by but still no carp, the two carp rolling on my swim told me that was fish here. I waited anxiously for a take but no carp answered my prayers. The hours past by in agony, knowing that the fish where there. What took them so long to find my baits?

45 minutes off a lifetime

7 o’clock, the answer to my prayers was finally there. The first delkim broke the everlasting silence. I took the rod and started playing the fish. It was no hard fight she came quite easily to the shore. So it didn’t take long before she felt my unhooking mat. After weighing her the result was in a common of 9.7 kg ( 21lbs UK)

After releasing her back to the water, I quickly rebaited my rod and threw it back in to the lake. I just had finished resetting my rod and bobbin on the delkim on the second rod started to scream. This time after setting the hook hold I knew this was the one. The fight was hard, the fish kept taking line and didn’t stop. After a few minutes I could turn the carp around. He came closer and closer to the bank. The fight was very typical for a large fish on this lake. First glimpse of the fish made me certain that it was one of the larger mirrors on the lake. 15minutes later my dad placed the landing net under the fish, he was in. On the unhooking mat we saw that it was small bull the third largest fish on the lake. We knew that he weighed 22 kg (48lbs UK) the last time he was captured. We weighed him 3 times to be sure. Every one was anxious was he bigger than the last time, did he lose weight during the hard winter. The result blew me away my PB of 21,5kg (47 lbs UK) was finally broken after 3 years of hard and intensive fishing. My new PB stands now at 23 kg (50lbs UK).

I released this magnificent mirror back in to the lake and tried to prepare the rod so it could get back in the game. I didn’t even have the time to rebait the hook link. Before the first rod started to scream again. This time it went very quick, the fish didn’t put up a fight and was quickly in the net. It was a common that I caught one or two years ago with a weight of 14.5 kg (31lbs UK). But this time the scale didn’t reach the 30lbs marker. It stayed stuck at 13.2 kg (28lbs UK).

Nevertheless it was a nice close for this session. All this magic happened in just 45 minutes.

Jeroen de Meyer