Hit the road Jake: Three years in review

The rain slowly starts to fall again. The drops patter loudly on the forest, the small river and my tent. It's the first harbinger of autumn, and this is exactly the moment I like to spend by the water. The moment is favourable, I moved to a new city just a week ago. New challenges, new people and new waters. The latter has always been a great motivator for me to go fishing.

 

As I sit there and let my mind wander, I suddenly wonder how long it's been since I picked up my pen and wrote down the latest events. Was it one and a half, two years? No, I realise with horror that almost three years have already passed since my last blog on Hammertackle. Wow! In the truest sense of the word, because in the distance the rumble of a thunderstorm is now joining the patter of rain.

The thought scares me a little, how quickly time flies.

But I suppose I owe it to you at this point to at least briefly summarise what happened and why it was very quiet around me.

 

 

In spring 2022, I made a momentous decision. I had spent the previous years struggling through courses at university, never feeling like I was actually in the right place. Memorising and reproducing didn't feel like my path. In contrast, photography and filming became an increasingly concrete career path. And the day came when I turned my back on university and decided to devote all my energy to my passions.

My vision was to realise and film original ideas about fishing. I wanted to create something new. Films that break with the existing patterns of the world of carp fishing and angling in general.

In the same year, I undertook three major film projects in London, Slovenia and Amsterdam, which I would like to briefly report on here.

 

 

The first endeavour was a ten-day bike tour across London with my close friend and buddy Moritz. Thank you Ritz for everything you've been through with me! The plan was simple and crazy. We travelled by plane from Berlin to London, with two bikes, sleeping mats, two short rods and a few boilies in our sports luggage. Plus a heavy rucksack with cameras to document everything.

 

 

For the next two weeks, we travelled through half the city every day in search of carp in the winding canals, park lakes and small rivers. We slept under a tarp. Sometimes in the park, sometimes on abandoned boats.

 

 

I should have known from my previous trips to England that May is much colder there than here. At the beginning, it cooled down to single-digit temperatures at night and it rained cats and dogs for the last five days. Looking back, this trip was one of the craziest and most adventurous things Moritz and I have ever experienced.

But at least we caught a few carp, met some funny people and discovered the city in a very unusual way.

I still have hours of video footage from that time on my hard drive.

 

 

Just two weeks later, I travelled to Slovenia with my friend Guido. The aim here was to make a film about the Soça Valley and fly fishing. For me, this place is home. And for Guido, fly fishing is one of the things he does best. The time was simply marvellous, filled with wonderful experiences and great fishing. I filmed everything and used it to edit our film ‘Welcome Home’, which I released in autumn 2023.

 

 

But even after this trip, I moved on almost immediately, first to Spain and then to Amsterdam for the real mammoth project of the year. Felix Pinedo had asked me if I would like to contribute a film to his freestyle fishing cinema tour.

Moritz and I set off for Amsterdam in September 2022. We spent 20 days exploring the city's canals in two boats and fishing for carp. And in every conceivable weather condition. And always with the thought in the back of our minds that this film would be shown in the cinema. So it was a challenge in many respects, but we overcame it.

 

I was busy editing the film until spring 2023.

Moritz christened our film ‘Keeping It Moving’, which can now be seen on YouTube at Hammertackle.

 

 

 

Everything flowed seamlessly into the cinema tour, for which we travelled across Austria and Germany for 6 weeks. It was the highlight, but it was followed by a series of harsh lessons. But more about that next time. Let's return to the rain-soaked forest, to a small river where a fisherman is lying in his tent sleeping.

 

 

I wake up at some point in the night. The rain has stopped, only a few drops can be heard falling from the trees. It was difficult to fall asleep with my head full of thoughts and the thundering masses of water on the tent roof. At some point, I fall back into a restless sleep and wake up again in the first light. I'm listening to the birds, enjoying the peace and quiet and slumbering away, when the sudden shriek of the bite alarm makes me jump. As if stung by a tarantula, I jump out of my sleeping bag and just manage to catch my rod, which is already stuck to the bite indicator with the reel. My opponent pulls down the river like an express train on steroids. A good 100 metres without a break before everything comes to a standstill. The fish is bombproof, there's nothing I can do.

Somewhat dazed, I pack up my little camp that morning and make my way home. But the lost carp has aroused my curiosity. What might be living in this little river? What treasures are there to discover this time? It's the unknown, the vivid imagination that keeps drawing me back to fishing.

Your Jakob Mehltretter