My wife and I visited Europe for a week. Hired a guide and fished one day on a lake just outside of Amsterdam. Our guide Michael Stalenhoef was awesome and kept us on fish all day, then went out of his way by giving us a boat tour of the area and made sure we got back to town ok. I was hoping to catch my first zander but they weren't cooperating that day. My wife and I both caught our PB pike along with a lot of nice perch. The pike there are considerably thicker and heavier than our pike of similar lengths. At least the ones we caught were. Looking forward to going back.
So the difference between us and the Netherlands is that we can fish just about anywhere we want . In the Netherlands only a few bodies of water are open to the public with a Netherlands fishing license. The lake we were on a separate license needed to be bought from a commercial fishing operation that owned the rights to the lake. Also live bait was banned by the animal rights activists, and they very nearly got sport fishing banned. The most interesting part was how the guide handled those big pike. After being netted he placed them on a large wet mat to remove the hooks. I was told this was safer for the fish than leaving the fish in the net over the side of the boat like we do. The fish are less likely to role up in the net and injuring themselves. I've had fish role up and hook themselves worse in the net , so it's something to think about.
The guide was unfamiliar with musky fishing, and I thought it was funny when we spent time trolling for large pike and he switched to large baits that were no more than 5 inches and trolled at a blazing speed of 1.8mph. Maybe next time I'll introduce him to our musky trolling style and see how those big Dutch pike respond.
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