STORYTELLING — CREATING MEMORIES 4/50

TIP 3: WHERE YOU GET NO BITES… THAT’S WHERE YOU NEED TO BE!!!

It’s late August 2023 this time. We start the guided day with our loyal lodge guests: Lisa and Daniel.
Lisa has been fishing ‘diehard’ for pike for several years and casts all day long with the same lure, for years already — and that lure also delivered her personal best of 125 cm! Not a lady to underestimate, with rock-solid belief and confidence in what she does. I love that.
We start the first drift, which follows the edge of a weed plateau for hours, meticulously. (Again pre-programmed on our boats.) We comb the weedbeds meter by meter with our lures. It’s a summer day that starts rainy, but the fish cooperate well, with pike coming aboard like clockwork. Around noon it slows down a bit, but only briefly, and the end of the route (= drift) also delivers beautiful green pike ladies. When we reach the end of the drift, the boat anchors automatically. I say:

When I redeploy the electric motor and redo that short stretch, it doesn’t take long before Daniel gets a very heavy hit. “This pike is a different caliber,” he says — and indeed: the measuring board shows 114 cm. After taking the photos, I restart the route and only a few casts later Daniel shouts again: “Fish on! Another big brute!!!” And this pike lady is slightly bigger — the board shows 113 cm.
Daniel stands there a bit stunned after the photos and asks me: “So strange, I wondered why you came back here — we didn’t get a single bite here the first time!!!” I explain: “You know, when you make a drift where everything is identical — like here, weedbeds everywhere — and suddenly you stop getting bites, then THAT is the section you must always return to! Where you get no bites: that’s where the big ladies lie! And very often together as well!”
Daniel replied, surprised:

In the afternoon the weather became sunnier and we made our second long drift on another spot. The pike kept coming. But again, on a stretch where nothing happened, my lure suddenly got stuck on something very heavy!!! It was also my only bite that day, because I usually cast very large chunks of lure.

What a beast: a beautiful pike lady of 121.5 cm!!!

Fun detail: during their next summer holiday in 2024 in our Volkerak Lodge, Lisa would break her personal best with a Volkerak monster. The AnyWareFishing measuring board stopped at 127 cm.
And in autumn 2024 Daniel returned with his regular fishing buddy and took the 2024 pike record in our lodges — the AnyWareFishing board showed 129 cm!
Check our ‘Hall of Fame’: Click here for our Hall of Fame with all yearly biggest pike

THE HOTSPOTS WHERE NO BITES CAME FROM!!!

A top day with a golden edge.

Unforgettable memories.