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Our Mouching reporter and pike addict Antoine KOPFF has tested for us, and more precisely for you, fly fishing for pike in the canals around Zwolle in Holland. Since then, he really thinks that the sun sucks.

“So, you are driving to Holland, aren’t you? I bet you don’t go there to visit Van Gogh Museum!

– Well, no, it’s not what you imagine…”

“To Holland? For four days? Super, you go to Amsterdam, don’t you?

– Not at all, to the country, around Zwolle!

– Are you crazy?”

If you have already been there, these talks aren’t strange to you. Remember when you tried to explain to your friends you had planned to go fishing pikes in Holland !

I had already managed to convince my favourite pal (see  Scotland) :

“Yes, indeed, you’ll see, ok the countryside isn’t worth it, nothing to visit in fact, but, precisely, there are plenty of fish, huge monsters, much better than in Ireland, nothing to compare with Sweden and Alain recommended me a lot of crazy places”.

It was to happen like that. Called on the phone, Alain Barthélémy, the famous guide you well know (who unfortunately was in France at that moment) had confirmed us the time was perfect and advised us of a dozen different spots where we were to hallucinate.

The matter is, as soon as the first day, the weather began to be really much nicer than it should have been… Every one in T-shirt, they caught fish only the first hour after sunrise and nothing any more. But actually nothing at all, even if we insisted, poor crazy of us!

We tried everything, every place, streamers of different colours (and only ONE was successful), any hour, castings on the right, on the left, in front, behind, in the center, exactly diagonally, crossed, on surface…

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The thermometer stood at 20 degrees during all our stay (we had shortened it out of vexation, my pal getting nearly mad in spite of his nicest pike). Thelight was bright and dazzling and there was no movement in the water.

We were really disappointed! And our friends were right, except fishing, around Zwolle, there’s not much to do.

What’s worse, the following week, the thermometer registered 9 degrees and it rained all day long… What a dream!

Antoine KOPFF