03-04-2020: It is a strange time at this moment now that Covid 19 is also present in the Netherlands for a number of weeks. What first seemed to be an innocent virus for us Dutch people has now caused more than 1,000 deaths in the Netherlands. The government of the Netherlands has currently opted not to give a lock-down, but to call on people to stay at home as much as possible. As long as we are not with more than three people on the street and stay one and a half meter apart, we can still do "everything". We can still fish, but the question is whether this is wise, especially with the beautiful weather. Of course there are still plenty of places in the densely populated Netherlands to fish alone. However, I wonder whether it is wise now that the hospitals fill up and the pressure on our government is increasing to switch to a total lock-down. Maybe from Monday I will try again to catch a carp when others are back at work. But I will stay at home this weekend so as not to increase the pressure on the street.
03-04-2020: In January I was still very positive about all the fishing holidays we were going to do this year, but now three months later, one holiday after the other is canceled. We still have some vacations for this year, but I fear that these too will be moved to 2021, hopefully that we will have covid 19 under control than.
In 2017 we had a great week with our southern neighbors, Belgium! We had rented a holiday home from a koi carp breeder who had made a paradise with number of ponds with young koi carp where we were allowed to fish. I have been looking after the internet site of this house but unfortunately I cannot find it anywhere.
11-04-2020: The advice of the Dutch government is to stay inside as much as possible. But now we really needed a lot of sunlight so today we went fishing for an hour in a quiet ditch in De Lier so that we stayed away from other people.
14-04-2020: Many fishermen went fishing on Easter Monday, but despite the fact that things are going better with the corona numbers in the Netherlands, we have not taken any risks and stayed at home during the Easter days. Today others had to work again and we (my oldest son and I) drove to Lelystad to go fishing in one of the ponds of Toms Creek. Fortunately, as expected, it was very quiet and we also caught nice. 28 sturgeons, 7 catfish and a striped Bass.
17-04-2020: Is a bit bummed today! Actually we would fly to Morocco tomorrow to fish for carp there, but with covid-19 that adventure is canceled this year. And now that Belgium keeps the borders closed for two more weeks, the holiday booked there will also be canceled. So also no trout fishing in Belgium :( And what do you do if you are bored for a day ..... then you are going to buy things that you do not really need at the moment. But with 50 new lures we will soon be able to ahead of time :)
19-04-2020: When we drove away after the last fishing trip in the Lier, we came across a ditch where we saw a number of carp swimming. Today we went fishing for a few hours in which we eventually caught 3 carp.
20-04-2020:
Yesterday my two sons came home angry because they had been sent away by the police while fishing in a ditch around the Delft nuclear power station, but today they managed to catch 34 gobies in the Delft canal.
22-04-2020: The weather remains nice so we quickly grabbed a fishing rod and went fishing for an hour. In the end we managed to catch two carp.
24-04-2020: After weeks of drought, they predict rain in a few days. You can already feel this in the humidity that goes up. Not only do we feel that, but also the carp that immediately started breeding. When I am fishing abroad, I sometimes get the question how the carp are doing in the Netherlands. Now this movie has been made in one of the tens of thousands of ditches in the Netherlands, calculate how many carp are swimming around;)
27-04-2020 till see may: Actually, we would now be in Belgium for a week, but since our southern neighbors have still closed the border, we have booked a holiday home in Ossenzijl for a week. In front of the house is the Kalenbergergracht where we mainly fished in the evening. But we also visited two trout ponds and a pond with sturgeons, catfish and carp this week. So we still had a nice week in our own Netherlands.
27-04-2020: After unpacking the car and rigging the rods, we quickly went fishing in front of our holiday house. Soon the first roaches were caught and we had a lot of fun when a pike hit on one of the roach my oldest son had on the line. Unfortunately it came loose.
28-04-2020: Today we first went fishing in trout pond De Woldstek in Ruinerwold. After a bad first hour things quickly got better and we managed to catch 11 trouts.
29-04-2020: In recent years we have mainly been abroad, but now that we must continue to appreciate the Netherlands, we also appreciate nature in the Netherlands a lot more. De weerribben are a beautiful area!
In the evening we went fishing for the cottage again and the first breams were also caught.
30-04-2020: After the walk today we quickly grabbed the rods again;)
