Spin off- Fishing trip with family @ France part2 !!!

Finally i had some time to upload a bunch of pictures from our yearly fishingtrip - MAY 2011 - France.

This year we went to the ABBEYLAKES, about an 450km drive from where i live.
We left about 4:00AM and arrived about 8:45AM.

My dad and his grandson.

The Clubhouse of ABBEY,

Kingfisherslake where the monsters should be at.

Our rib boat, for placing the buoys and attaching the breaklines.

We had loads to unpack and make a lot of rigs. 6 rods werer going to be used for catfish.

What a mess in those boxes.. Gladly we didnt forget those tiny details.

With a depth/fishfinder we checked the circumstances below. Row Row the boat. Searching for potential hotspots.

Looks beautifull... Just me and my family.

Around dinnertime someone from the Abbey-complex was delivering food. How great is that.

Lets see how the bottom of the lake looks like at our hotspots... GOPRO DOWNUNDER !! That was fun.

A few GOPRO shots:

live bait above the weed

Mosquito time @ nights yikes.

he is on a row now, catching one to another.

My son rowing in circles and enjoying al those little tiny bugs onshore.

Yes he did fell in the water, but kept his tshirt dry.

Go to sleep little bugger! ;)

Unhooking the catfish.. You can see the live bait/eel trying to escape.

My son enjoying the sunset.

My dad holding onto a huge one.

Say cheeeeese :o)

A big Catfish, 1.60mtr!!! Me and my son

One of the Buoys.

My son caught so many little fishes. I think they called Bluegill sunfish

This is called a roach/rudd? hmm in the Netherlands we got loads of these swimming in the lakes

checking the baits

Another big one, at night.

The roads werent all that..

Enjoying the vieuw

They are sooo slippery, difficult to hold on.

Grandpa, Pa and sun. Entire generation holding onto a catfish 1.75mtr.

About 35kilo.. like half the weight of my personal record catfish. That one i caught in Italy-Po about 70kilo. But still great sport and exciting to see my son holding onto such bigones.

setting it back in his envirement.

This is how you catch the bigger catfish. A Big rock, heavy rope to the Buoy. a little coloured ball with a clip. The breakline you attach to your 'dobber' / the floater and attach it to the clip. When i Catfish grabs the livebait it should hook itself by breaking the lines.

Using live baits.. an eel, which was almost just as long as the predator that took it. It didnt go trough the breaklines. In the early evening when i checked all of the 6 live baits.. i noticed there was something going on underneeth when i pulled up the eel. A fun drill followed by hand. A nice Pike 80cm.

My dad didnt knew onto which rod the catfish was hanging on. The catfish swim trough the bouays and trough other lines. It was one big mess. Finally my dad end up holding one rod in his hand from the side, and i went into the boat holding on the other rod... Tried to solve out the knots and get rid of the buoy where it got stuck on.. After a moment we thought the catfish was gone.. but al of a sudden, i noticed it was on my rod, which i had in that little boat. This catfish pulled me everywhere he went, and was dragging me with him. When i reached shore, my dad had the honor to get it out of the water.

My dad enjoying his holiday.

My son in action. holding my CJW Catfish rod, and ABU7000LD reel.. the funny thing was.... he was just pulling in the live bait at this moment.

It was a succesfull fishingtrip. We all caught our little and bigger fishes. For now, on to the next year.

15-5-2011 cruising @ Horst with the 7.9m2

Sunday late midday, i went to my cruising and speedingspot Strand Horst.

Hoping to give it a go, with my newest toy, the AC-1 2k11 7.9m2.

But once I arrived, the wind looked a bit too strong for the 7.9m2, so i rigged the 7.2m2 instead, with a C3 34cm Venom underneeth my FF102. A few laps later, ofcourse the wind dropped.
Hmms Okay, i wanted to try out my biggest sail anyway, and rigged the 7.9m2. I'm getting used rigging those sails now. Its goes quicker each time. I switched the fins aswell. A C3 Sting 38cm should do the job.

Settings for today: 7.9M2: Recommended mast P7-460 C100, streamlined extension set on +36cm and a boomlength 207,5 cm.

(A shorter boomlenght 205cm would give even more pull, but im not sure my boom is wide enough.As in this setting the sail was going over the sides of the boom) I will try that setting next time anyway. For now i was just cruising around the lake...enjoying my big sail and my new wetsuit 'O'neill Psychofreak'. I took my GoPro cam with me and had some nice long laps on film.

The conditions today: waterdepth -14cm NAP / 10-21knots / WNW direction
/

I havent been speeding today, only cruising the lake with speeds around 50km/h. I surfed a little distance of 45 kilometer before i called it a day.
One of these (summer)days, i'm planning to do a bit of long-distance. Making it myself not to difficult, so ill try about 200+ km at first and work on from there. Im not sure if a 102L is the right board to do it with 7.2/7.9m2 sails as im barely floating on it. Perhaps i'll loose in the meantime a bit of weight and it'll be perfect ;o)

Spinoff - Off to France - Family Fishtrip! 03 till 08th May 2011

Almost every year me and my dad go out for a little fishtrip. That on several locations within Europe and try to catch some big catfish. This time my son is going with us for the first time in his life. He find it very exciting as he's 8years old and never catched any catfish before, or haven't been fishing during the nighttime from a tent. I'ts going to be a trip of 5 days, as his schoolholiday ends next sunday. A trip with a little bit of 'luxury' at the fishingspot. Over there the host bring food to where your tent is placed, you can have crossaints and baquettes in the morning, a clubhouse nearby with a shower/toilets/store and free wifi. (1kilometer away from the tent)
The weatherforecast at the location looks warm and sunny.

Got all my windsurfgear taken out of the car now from my last trip, and started packing again for our fishtrip.

Fully packed and ready to go.
Time to relax, time to catch some catfish!

Updates will follow anytime soon

Afterwork session @ Horst 2th may 2011

First time with the P7 AC-1 2k11 6.3m2 that on my falcon 102 (my biggest board.)



I arrived a bit late, around 6.30pm on the water... Did a few runs before darkness came in. I had some doubts to rig my 7.2m2 again and then be fullpower.. but I wanted to try out my new 6.3m2 aswell. 6.3 it is. A bit low end for a change. Once again i had rotationproblems with the cambers in this AC1-2k11. Probably have to sand down my bottum batten aswell, as i did on the 7.2m2, which worked out okay afterwards. Besides the rotation error, this sail has an enormous drive. Didnt thought this combination would be so fast today.

My fastest runs were in the late evening, when i switched my c3 venom 32 to a smaller venom 30cm. with the 32cm i couldnt get it over 66kmh.


Just wanting to see what a smaller fin would do under this board.In combination with the Venom 32cm my streamlined extension was set on +8cm, with 1cm left below the pulley with boomlength 1.875m. Later on when i changed fins to 30cm,

i pulled it to the max,

with a boomlength 1.90m.

Surprisingly enough the wind became less and less, but speeds were improving. Im glad having a PR with my biggest board.

A max gps 67,10kmh which felt really easy. Perhaps some day ill hit the 70kmh with this board.

Around 6.30pm the conditions were like 16-26knots dropping down to 14-21knots - North East winddirection. Most people were allready gone when i came on as you can see here

GPS Speedranking for todays session, glad not being the last one ;o)


Time to go home