We got up this morning full of enthusiasm for a good day ahead unfortunately the weather had other ideas with a cold northerly wind blowing and lashing it down with rain, like all the rest of Europe Holland has just come out of a very cold winter and the weather is 3 or 4 weeks behind the norm, none the less us brits are made of stern stuff and we made our way just a few miles from our base near Nijmegen to the river Ijssel.




Meeting up with our Dutch hosts Tim, Willem and Mike they renewed our confidence a little informing us that the barbel are just coming out of their winter slumber and have started to feed over the last few days, fishing English style with open end feeder stuffed with softened pellet and fishmeal groundbait with a Sonubait halibut pellet on the hook we had to wait a couple of hours before the fish fed, but in the end they came on the feed and after a couple of bream and Ide Tom Sayer managed the first barbel of the trip and his first Dutch barbel only a scamp at around 5lb but most welcome.

We packed in around 1700 a little damp from the non stop rain but Tom had done the business with 3 barbel and Ade finished with one barbel and a cracking Ide of around 5lb as well as 3 nice bream, our Dutch hosts had not faired so well and had not managed to get the barbel to play ball today.

Tomorrow we are off to the River Waal, a much bigger river where we are going to need 6oz feeders to hold bottom but we hope to find the barbel hungry and with the weather forecast better for tomorrow fingers are crossed for more barbel action.

We are hoping for a better day tomorrow and if Frans lets us have a little piece of his cheese maybe we will put a picture of him on this blog.

Over to you Dutchy