Fly Fishing

Marcel_Karssies · Location: Enschede - The Netherlands

One of the annual trips that was still on the to do list was a trip to
the port of Rotterdam fishing for shad.
The shad roam the port in the summertime months until September
and can be caught on small flies in the salt.

After a three hours drive we arrived at our spot, one fisherman was
already fishing on the dam in the waterway.
Shad where busting baitfish in the surface, some of them jumped clear
from the water.
By shear luck I caught my first shad of the season.

Then one of the locals appeared and while we where catching nothing
he caught one after the other shad.
The good man was willing though to enlighten me and after a quick
course on shad fishing in the harbor I started to catch fish.

We fished the outgoing tide, then the fish were active.
When the tide turned everything went dead.
At incoming water we still tried to catch fish but the shad where gone.
With the fast rising water and the heavy shipping we had to leave the dam
Because the wakes would sweep you of your feet.

We decided to wait until the tide went out again.
For a moment we saw jumping shad and thought we would have a nice
Evening fishing session but the bite never materialized.
The locals complained that the fishing was not up to standard, near
sunset we decided to call it quits.

low tide - high tide

I managed four shad, bycatch where a couple of crabs and a little flounder.
My buddy got three shad and hooked himself in the process, luckily he could
remove the hook by himself.

Shad fly from one of the locals

Low tide again.

Fishing was not so hot but we learned quite a bit from the locals, next year
we will be better prepared….

dann · Location: Lancaster pa

Nice pics, great post and I like the look of that stripping basket, I have a W.J. and I'm not to crazy about it. We have a good shad run here in PA on the lower Susquehanna in the tidel part of the river. I have never fished it, but after falling apon some of these post it will be my main objective this spring. From the local post I've read its not un common to catch shad up to 5-6 lbs, with the acrobatics to go with.