One Midsummer Morning

Dear readers,

I started my Finnish carp season a bit late. This year I am going to try to fish the season more on the later side (summer&autumn). Years before I have been struggling with May and June fishing, so this year I am going to try something different. I started the season just on Midsummer. 

The first rays of the sun were just hitting my swim when I had a run. (FYI - The sun rises 3:50 in midsummer... That's quite of an early morning.) I tricked the fish with Prologic Banana malt snowman 20mm+20mm (the swim was baited with PL Banana Malt Stick&Method mix). I was also using a new mainline, Prologic Interceptor Fluoro Carbon coated mono (0,40mm). The line performed really well, and despite playing the fish around the rocky&snaggy swim, the line didn't have any scratches. I am really happy with this.

A nice start for a (hopefully) successful season...

The long & lean common carp had some marks from spawning, and it was not really on its prime condition. Anyhow, the carp put the scales to 12 kg. A nice start for the season.

[For all the smart people who are asking why I am wearing a beanie in midsummer, I would like them to watch this video about Finnish "summer"..]

The Slovenian Expedition: Part II - The Mud Warriors

You can start by reading the Part I of The Slovenian Expedition here.

The first morning started with baiting up our swim and recasting our rigs. The game turned on as we caught our first carp during the first day. We got some nice pictures of that one as you can see in my earlier blog  (I am not really into using a carp sack to get better photos, as usually I want the fish to swim free again as soon as possible.) We got a fish every now and then, but nothing really big. I was actually having really good time by the lake, so slow action was not a problem for me. And comparing to the average time it takes to get a bite on a Finnish lake the action was quite good.

As you can imagine, there were a lot of people going out on Mayday, and the days before and after. A lot of commotion on the banks and on the lake. We experienced some minor disturbance on our swim, as our marker pole was almost taken by "The Cocta"-boat...

The Cocta boat nearly killed our marker pole - and caused somewhat of a minor disturbance... David was not really happy either. :)

We also had some rain... Which in some banks equals mud... On this particular bank, I started to feel like a swamp donkey. My leather boots still coped with the mud, but it was hard to do anything while slipping around in thick goo. :)

Muddy boots, no problem. You can trust these, they were made in Finland :)

The third night our baiting strategy paid off with some nice carp. First David got a nice 15kg+ then something even bigger. Well, I will let David tell his story of his carp... I also got some action in the form of a nice common carp. The fish was 15,2 kg and I was really happy to catch that one. I caught the carp with a single 20mm Prologic BK2S boilie.

A nice surprise for me. (Actually I was really hoping for this, as David just had 2 runs above 15kg...)

David was using the new Prologic C3 13' 3,5lbs rods. They were easy to cast and they were great for playing the fish. I experienced that there is a big difference between a 9'6" and a 13' rod. A lot of my moves on the bank would have put Bill Dance to shame. But I did NOT lose a single fish. All runs landed on these rods, so I was really happy with the result :)

All in all, I had some seriously good time in Slovenia with David, and I felt really welcome. What else can you ask for? I'll be back for sure.