We visited our regular river far downstream from our usual haunts.
With the exchange license of a fellow club we ended up in the 
federal state of Lower Saxony where our little stream had
become a slow moving river.


Wide and slow moving

It was a sunny summers day so our intended quarry would be the chubs that where most likely feeding on the surface.
The spots we visited had some fish milling around in the surface but most where tiny fish.
After some discussions about what to do we decided to skip the chubs and go after the predators.
We ended up at a stretch where we did good business with pike and yellow perch last winter.

It was not really the season to go after these fish species but we had confidence that some would be around.
The black zonker did not entice any fish so I switched over to a polar minnow that mimicked a small yellow perch.
The polar minnow did the trick with the first pike, tiny but a fish is a fish.


Pike

I continued fishing upstream untill I felt something hitting the fly.
The fish missed the streamer so I concentrated my cast on the area I had the last contact.
Finally I had a solid hookup and the species I was after came to the surface, a yellow perch.


Yellow perch.

Now I knew that there where much larger specimens around so I was hoping I had hit a school of fish and would catch a couple more fish.
Nothing happened though so further upstream I went.
After a while I had another fish on, the tiniest pike I have ever caught.


Tiniest pike.

The last contact of the day was of a bigger fish.
Without a wire trace the bigger pike just had to jump to make short
work of my leader.
The wire leaders will be standard issue the next time I fish that part of our stream.