Day 1
The sun rises over the endless reed beds that are softly blowing in the slight morning breeze. The water is calm and crystal clear. Some small baitfish are swimming around your feed when you wade slowly through the water. Everything seems to be peaceful. But appearance are deceptive……. There is something in the water with bad intention. This is the moment when you focus your attention to just on one thing. Strip line off your reel, lift the rod and cast the your fly. All your senses told you where to cast, you can feel it. You start stripping, 1, 2, 3, 4, a jerk in your line…. and you know this morning becomes a great
All this happened to me and my mate Stefan almost two weeks ago when we moved over to one of Europe’s prime waters for pike. And we had a lot great mornings, noons, afternoons and evenings. We started our journey fishing a spot very well known to us, a spot that have been shown to us by one of our friends who is also a guide for pike fishing on Rügen. Not a common spot for the fly fishers but very well known to the local anglers, fishing with spinners, wobblers and many other boring baits. They do have their success but this is nothing compared to the fly. When the pikes are in the mood you can destroy these guys within less than half an hour by just one simple fly.
What is the secret? The slowness of the fly is the trigger that brings success. Of course there are also spinning baits, twitches and so on that can be fished slowly but these guys don’t think so far. Is it bad? NO!! If they would succeed the pike population would decrease dramatically. They are killers!!
Luckily that day we were alone out on the water. Wade fishing is so funny. It is a complete save way of fishing unless you take care for a few things. More of this later,… In the well known manner we started fishing the edges of the wadeable terrain to the deeper water always in the hope for the big mama. Well the big mamas didn’t hat the sympathy to take your fly. But the middle sized ruffians had, and a lot of them. Compared to last year this was much more action. Was it a better time, weather, ?? Maybe,… but I don’t think so. We just had more sense for what we are doing and a more specialized focus.
For example, we were fishing different colored flies, and in many cases the other one could catch the fish that has been missed by the other one. In fact it was not very hard to convince the pikes for second strike. They don’t know the fly and in many cases not even the angler.
Bang, bang, bang, we had a real fun with the German pikes. Interesting also was that the majority of strikes we got in the more shallower areas than in the deeper holes. Later this will turn out to be the success factor for this trip.
greets
Philipp