Summertime memories

We still have quite a lot of (mushy) ice on the lakes. Nothing happening here.

Well, my so-called friends have been cheering me up with pictures of green banks and carp catch photos. Summer will come here, eventually. While waiting for the summer to come, the best way of getting my mood up is to browse through some old fishing photos! 

This beautiful common carp was caught from Slovenia (picture: David Primozic). I think I forgot to smile!

Throwback Friday!

Just a picture of a carp from a couple of years ago (maybe 2013?).

Not a biggie, but still a nice wild carp :)

Blip. Blip. Bliiiiip!

Dear Readers,

It's been a while and the blogging break is now officially over. In the future you will be seeing shorter blogs, longer blogs, or whatever. So be prepared for anything. I thought about changing the name of my blog to somewhat more descriptive of my pointless ramblings. 

So in the future it's not going to be only about carp, but also about carp. So without further ado, I present you: Carp Of The Thousand Lakes!

Hello! It's been a while! (this carp was from Slovenia Photo: David Primozic)

Slovenia Carp 2016 - part 2.

Hi all! 

I just wanted to post a couple of pics from the Slovenian trip I made. The lake was Smartinsko - a lake I can recommend. This was my second time there, and probably not the last. It's a lake, not a hole in the ground. :) The carp are from the little ones up to 30kg+.

If you are interested, just contact David Primozic for fishing carp in Slovenia! (http://www.fishing-guide.si/carp-fishing/)

A hard fighting common carp. A real beast on the end of the line!!!

David Primozics nice mirror carp!

All carp on this trip were caught with CC Moore bait. My common in the picture was caught with Odyssey XXX + Acid pear -pop up. I can't recall what bait David used for this fish, but it was CC Moore :) And finally a landscape photo from Smartinsko...

This is just one bay, not the whole lake :) The carp started to spawn in this bay while we were fishing.

Long Time No See

I was fishing again - for carp - unsurprisingly. The weather was not actually really nice. Fishing alone when it rains can cause a bit of claustrophobia. Spending almost all daytime and nights in your tent is not my idea of spending my time in the nature. Enough with the whining and let's move on.

Of a two night session, I managed to catch just one carp. But luckily for me, I was more than happy. It was my biggest linear carp and also an old friend from my last autumn fishing sessions. You can click on this blog entry and compare it by yourself. Of course it's the same fish. Anyhow, now it was fatter than last autumn. Really happy about that. Also I noticed that no way this fish has spawned and would be in this condition in the middle of July! This particular carp had not spawned. I wonder if some of the fish are going to spawn at all?

I am really happy with my Prologic Commander Unhooking mat. Due to its folding stucture, it is compact to carry around. The side and end walls are high, keeping the fish safe.

Midsummer Carping 2015 (and The Small Issue of Bright Skies)

Hi all! 

It's been a long time without any carpy pictures, so I decided to go and take some new ones. Of course, it was not an easy task, as I was fishing a new swim. I once wrote to the Carp Core magazine about new swims and blanking, so I know quite a bit how "carpy looking" swims can cause you some hard times. Luckily, this was not the case this time around.

I managed to prebait the swim just once, so I wasn't really optimistic about catching anything. Luckily the weather was nice with some sunshine, wind and clouds. The night was also quite cloudy, so it wasn't too bright for carps liking. In Finland, June nights are so bright you can read a book outside even at 2 am. Sometimes that is more or less an issue when you fish a night lake (where carp feed only in the dark hours). So having the clouds up in the sky was a good thing for me.

My setup was this time again my trusty Okuma Trio 55 Baitfeeders and Prologic Fastwater 9'6" 3,5lbs. I just can't tell how nice it is to battle carp with this really compact and lightweight setup. I will not got back to using 12' or 13' rods. Casting distances are rarely a problem in Finland anyway, sometimes casting 10 meters is is enough. Doing that with 13' rods is really not easy :) Besides, I usually fish alone - netting the fish is so much easier with a shorter rod.

During the night I heard some carp jumping in my swim, so I woke up every now and then. It really wasn't a good nights sleep. So when I got a definite liner at 4 am, I was getting more and more excited about actually getting a bite. A couple of hours later I got a screamer run. Rushing outside the tent and grabbing the rod was as fun as ever! I can say the fight was really hard, and I was pushing my line (0,405 mm Prologic Interceptor Fluoro Carbon coated monofilament) to the limit. The fish pulled the line through some rocks close to the bank, so I was more than happy to have the fluorocarbon coating on my line. I think braided line would have snapped in an instant... 

I managed to net the fish and my new unhooking mat was tested for the first time. The fish was a great looking common carp. I was more than happy with the result.

Up Close And Personal

There are a lot of good guys making videos of true carp fishing. For instance, you can go and watch the work of Alliance Peche, short movies by Frank Pizon or the Vienna boys' production Metropolis Carp. Of course there are a lot of great videos made, but these few are mentioned just as examples. (Also worth checking out is a Finnish video made by team Siloneula).

For my part, I think that I want to keep my dearest moments and experiences to myself. Sharing something that you truly love is actually really personal. Also the work made by the people mentioned above is probably enough, as I really don't believe my version of "true carp fishing" would be better (or anywhere close :)) The feelings you have, the moments you live - they are something I find pretty hard to share. I remember a Ernest Hemingway quote "Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl." (Still don't know if Hemingway really said this. Internet quotes can be dodgy :))  Some things are just too personal to be shared. A part of my fishing is a piece of the essence of who I am. That part I am not ready to share.

You can be sure that I will write trip reports also in the future. It is nice to share some things from my trips, but you can be also sure that a lot of the stories will never be told. And I will never tell you the story how my backlead got stuck between rocks and I consequently ended up losing a fish. That would have been my first carp of 2015. Instead of a picture of that carp, may I present you a video full of carp runs... where no backleads get stuck!

Middle of Nowhere

So, the season is just about to start. We had a spell of warm weather this year and we got rid of the ice cover a bit early (at least in Southern Finland). So this actually means two things: 

1) I must start making my boilies and rigs quite soon

2) I must plan what lakes to fish

Part 1 of my plans will probably fail miserably, and I will be tying the rigs just before my first session. Also, probably no self-made boilies either. But anyway, that's life. Considering how much you need to be organized to fully function in todays world, I prefer a bit of chaos in my fishing and preparations. Besides, a lot of people think that only the simple people need to have their surroundings organized. I must be very smart then :)

OK. Now to the second part of my "What to do"-list. Planning. More or less, I will be fishing a few of my already-familiar lakes and maybe doing some discoveries (if I have the time or motivation). A lot of the time my "discoveries" have been... well... more like disasters. I remember one time I was checking out a remote forest lake, which had very swampy banks. When actually getting to the bank (walking 1 km in very rough terrain and bitten by around 200 mosquitoes) I found out that a big animal had visited my swim as well. Checking the huge footprints and big piles of soft poo, I had a gut feeling, that it wouldn't be wise to fish this swim at all. The only reasonable thing I could do then was to walk back to my car and drive away. Of course, the markings were made by a bear. I am not afraid of bears, but considering all the goodies in my bait-bag, I am really not keen on fishing with bears. :)

Fishing in the middle of nowhere (around 2009). The place was actually quite nice (if you like deer flies)

Still, sometimes I have been very lucky, as some places I've discovered have been really kind to me (like catching carp on the first night on a new lake). Going to new lakes can be frustrating, but sometimes it is like getting to know a new friend. 

No matter the size of the carp, getting the first carp from a new lake is always happy time!

Pointless Ramblings - vol. 23

So days are getting longer here and I am reading fishing reports from my friends in Southern Europe... It gets me a bit jealous as it still takes some time before our season really starts. Weeks feel like years at this point - still eventually we will get rid of the ice cover on the lakes.

As some readers probably know, I have some experience in different fishing styles. (Two days ago I was fishing for zander on dropshot-lures, and I actually DID catch a nice zander!) Of course I always prefer carp fishing to other types of fishing, but every now and then I get distracted :) I can say that I started fishing probably at the same time I was learning how to walk. So being a fisherman instead of a carp angler has a time advantage of 25 years or something. 

What I will always do in the future is that I will try different fishing styles, approaches and target species. I will never be a 100% carp angler (I'm probably 95%), as life is too short to be narrow-minded. There is always new things to discover and fish to be caught. It's not just about aligning your 720 degree semi-stiff chod-roundabout rig. But trust me, carp is still my no. 1 species, and you will see this also in my future blog updates.

A small linear carp caught while doing some stalking somewhere around 2010. I remember catching this with Okuma Sheffield -centerpin reel and Prologic MP Specialist 12'. It was pure joy, even the fish was small.

If I remember my catches right, I have never caught this linear carp before. A nice catch in the autumn 2014 darkness. Here the setup was Okuma Trio 55 baifeeder and Prologic Fastwater 9'6" 3,5 lbs.

So my pointless rambling is coming to an end (this time). Maybe on my next blog I will have some interesting things to tell about my boilies or rigs. OR maybe I keep on talking b-shit. :)

Best regards-

Henrik

Rocky swims and RIGHT lines

Dear Readers,

It's been a while since my last blog entry. I managed to do some fishing since, and had some good experiences with new tackle.

As I have told earlier, the carp swims here in Finland can be rocky and weedy (a lot of these lakes formed during the last ice age, hence the rough banks). Normal monofilament usually ends up in the bin after a few fights with a carp, as the line gets "the rash" from the rocks. Braided line would just break almost in an instant. 

Now my issues with line have been solved with the Prologic Interceptor Fluoro Carbon Coated mono. It performs like a mono, with good breaking strain. It really doesn't get any scratches (because of the fluorocarbon coating) and after a trip it is as good as new. I am using 0,40 mm and it suits my needs perfectly. I can recommend this line to anyone who is fishing on rocky & weedy swims.

Ah - that will be it for my tackle related talk. 

The last trip I did was a nice two-night session fishing alone. I managed to catch a nice brace of carp, and I was more than happy being on the bank. I still had my fair share of misfortune, as my cameras remote controller died on a critical moment. Few good photos anyway, and here's a pic of my first carp of the session.

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. 

Upcoming season 2014!

So the season 2014 is just around the corner. Some carpers in the southern Europe have enjoyed good carp fishing already. But here we'll get rid of the ice cover within a few weeks. Anyway my aims for the next season are relatively modest. Fishing, after all, is about enjoying what you do. My years of competitive angling have already insured me that I know how to catch fish and I don't have to prove anything to anyone. The only thing I am hoping for is some kind of a discovery. Should it be a new idea, a big fish that shouldn't have been in this lake, or just a new perspective on fishing in general. This year I am also going carping abroad, so you'll see something about that on my blog later on.

Almost forgot about this one. Absolutely a beautiful film by Alliancepeche. It's about the freedom in fishing (I think). Just watch it. http://vimeo.com/87580260 

This was such a beautiful fish from 2011. Or IS a beatiful fish to be exact... Swimming free in a non-commercial lake!

Midwinter Thoughts

As the great thinker H.P. Baxxter once put it - "The chase...is better than the catch." For some people out there, it seems that the catch is all there is to carp fishing. I find this philosophy quite blasé. As I said in my earlier blog, the fish after all, are just fish.

I think we all enjoy hearing good stories. That's why we watch movies and read books. Even our lives can be seen as a story, a lifelong journey that could be written as a book (or several). Anyway, there's little point in measuring life by numbers, like annual income, weight, height or number of children. The only people interested in those facts are statisticians.

I am quite sad to see that carp fishing is heading strongly to plain statistics. I prefer stories to numbers. So if I hear a fishes weight before hearing the story behind it, I am not impressed at all. And if you catch the monster of the day-ticket lake, make sure you can tell a story about it. It's sad if the only thing worth mentioning about catching a monster fish is that last time "Betty" (the fat lady carp) was caught, she weighted 2 kilos less. It's not a story, or at least a story to be told to future generations of angling.

Be nice, and catch experiences rather than PBs. If you have a good story, you can always write a nice article or even a book someday!

Oh, and here's an old picture, a real blast from the past. My biggest carp caught on sweetcorn. Too bad I had to stop fishing for carp that autumn, I had a MSc thesis to write... And yes, there's a story behind that carp. Someday hopefully, I can find the time to tell the story.

A nice common caught from a lake somewhere quite close to the arctic circle...

Fishy Business

If something is not evolving, it's not going to grow into something better. I mean carp fishing is really fun and it has a mysterious touch to it, but looking how badly the over commercialization has impacted our lifestyle just gives me a headache. For instance, the UK based carp magazines are more like a 100-page adverts. Use this, buy that, not that (it's the last years model which is totally useless), go there, fish this way, etc. The most underlined feature is that a new product has given Ginormous results with carp, and this product is supplied by the anglers sponsored company (what a surprise!).

If we take a good look in the mirror and cut the BS-talking, there is very little under the sun in carp fishing. But the main question is: Is the commercial buzz advancing our lifestyle or eating it inside out? My opinion above was that it gives me an headache at least. Here in Finland it's not such a problem, as we don't have a market for carp tackle. But well, this problem with commercialization has brought some serious issues with it.

It wasn't a long time ago when I read about a group of carp anglers who caught ca. 700 carp in a period of few days. The anglers had statistics of how many 40 lbs how many 30 lbs they had caught etc. I mean I would have stopped fishing after landing about 20 fish. And it would have been over the top already. 

WE should adjust our fishing with respect of wildlife. Even if we start catching like crazy, we should consider for what reason are we fishing for. Is it that we want to spend time in the nature, catching fish? Is it for the outside demand for massive carp catches? Is it that we want to enjoy and experience the same thrill and the mystery as our ancestors? I mean tackle business will do just fine even without the massive carp catches and making every magazine an advert.

(PS. I tried to attach here a photo of my 400 carp catch, but I couldn't find the picture) :)

Old Tackle and Jinxed Tackle

I clearly remember the day I got my first bite alarms. It was the end of August 2007. There was nothing special about them, as I bought the cheapest models I could find. I wasn't a Money Man then (the situation remains the same even now!). Anyway, I also got my first rod pod (which was also the cheapest available). Yet I had them, and I would proceed being a successful carp angler. (NOTE: Success hasn't reached me yet)

Here are my trusty old  alarms. Reliable, yes. Pretty, no. Without remote alarm function, useless.

Putting up my new pod and alarms plus the swingers was a bit tricky. When you haven't seen it anywhere, nor you can ask your mates, you just have to assemble it like a small jigsaw puzzle. Looking back, it sounds really stupid having problems with things simple as that. But it was fun back then. Everything was SO new and exciting. Having a few years of action with these cheap alarms, I decided it was time to go for better ones.

Where am I aiming with this... Well, I think my newer alarm set (Prologic Polyphonic), which I bought after the old set, was jinxed! The old set had me my first carp, my PB carp, several good ones, nice bream catches (including a triple run!) and good memories in general. When I got my new alarm set, I was really happy. It looked nice, worked perfectly, but I caught zero fish with them... Nothing had changed in my tackle, only the alarms were different. My fishing mates caught carp, I blanked. Several times. The first carp I caught with this alarm set was from UK! I thought the curse had been broken. But when I returned to Finland, I realized the curse was for Finnish carp only! I remained on a blanking streak.

I reckon I had brought the misfortune on me for being a tackle tart. I think I could have managed with the old alarms, but really, can you have a 30 € alarm set with a rod set worth 600 €? This curse of jinxed alarm set was broken by the carp mentioned in my earlier blog 600 hours = one carp. It really took time to break the curse.

I think I have become a masochist. I bought a new alarm set. Already I am having problems with my new MP3-alarms (Prologic WUSB). I just can't find a good song for a carp run... :) Wagners "Ride of The Valkyries" could be the one... Or maybe "Carp Fishing on Valium"? :)

In Bait I Trust

My bait bag photographed somewhere in the deep forests of Finland. I was a bit worried that a bear might get a scent of my candy-smelling bait. I was fishing really close to known bear spots.

There are many different perspectives into carp bait. Some people are radically enthusiastic about their (sponsored) bait, some people hate using commercial baits and tend to stick with the more natural choices of peas and liver pieces. The different views are so conflicting that bait wars are commonly fought on forums, etc. What I would love to see is a bait fight between two bait-sponsored carp anglers. Especially when the real carp pros could catch big carp with tiny rocks painted red!

I can definitely say that I am not a pro carp angler, as I need good bait to succeed. The early days of my carping.... well... I had some bad experiences with baits for their wrong texture and smell. When you combine the aroma of a dump, rotten fish plus a hint of garlic, you get the picture. There are bait that are so foul-smelling that it's just over the top. I mean I'm not a princess, as I have worked in sewage water facility, but some of the bait are just not meant for fish (or any living thing). There are some foul-smelling bait that catch, yes. But the foulness has different levels. It goes maybe like this:

1) Salmon fillet (fish caught 5 days ago)

2) Yesterday's cooked salmon fillet left overnight to the table

3) The cooked salmon fillet in biowaste bucket for two days

---

5) The salmon fillet in the dump with battery acid, rotten rats, etc.

When your bait is on the foulness-scale 5, you really need to consider your bait again. Like some fishermen wiser than I say, the bait needs to smell enough to attract, but not too much to repel. You need to remember that carp have olfactory senses (smell) that are about 40 000 000 times more sensitive than ours. They probably can smell the bait so accurate, that they know what perfume your wife is using (If you still have a wife, carp anglers seem to lose theirs).

Well, the carp are also quite opportunistic in certain waters, and the smell of the bait isn't such an issue. But a lot of these opportunistic waters have also smaller fish (aka nuisance fish). The "nuisance fish" in Finland ins't the odd 10 lb tench (that would be a national record), but the hordes of roach, small bream and silver bream. They tend to peck the softer baits off the hook in about 15 minutes. And the medium-hard versions get mauled by vicious crayfish. The bait needs to handle punishment like nothing else.

Believe me, I've seen the evidence! Once I had an underwater camera next to my bait. It was like watching, well... some sort of a washing machine with fish going around, groundbait particles flowing in the water, which was getting murkier every minute because of the fish-induced limbo. I wouldn't put there a carp bait that was softer that a rock. So natural baits are an option in Finnish waters. But most of the time, a very bad option.

Most commonly the problem with the bait is that fish don't seem to care about eating it. Now after long time of experimenting, I have confidence in the bait I am using. When I get definite signs of fish on the swim, I always get them on the hook! And it's as much as I can hope for a bait!

A common carp I caught with natural bait (corn)

Ghosts of The Deep

When carp fishing isn't difficult, it's extremely difficult. The story is, of course, different in heavily stocked waters and lakes with freshly stocked or naive fish. Hook-happy fish are also easy to catch. But mostly, the cunning and old carp of the deep are like the creatures of imagination.

When you catch such a creature, the moment is like a dream. And when the fish swims away into the abyss, so disappears the image of the fish from your mind. The only evidence for that the fish was real are your photographs.

What I really love in Finnish carp angling is that most of the fish in any given lake have never been caught or ever will be. They will remain ghosts of the deep. I will remain happy not catching them all.

I just love looking at old catch photos. They keep me sane on blanking streaks...

The Ketchup Bottle Effect

In Finnish language there is a saying about a ketchup bottle. At the start you are not getting any, and then, KAWOOSH, you're getting plenty (or too much). This is a very uncommon phenomena in finnish carp angling. Most often, we're not getting any, and if we are getting, it's small time and seldom...

So far this year has been a success. 9 nights carp fishing, 7 nights with landed carp! And these are on different lakes, with two new spots included. It's not like I'm playing it safe. It's just that I am getting carp better than ever. I fear that I have learned something about carp fishing (!)

The most difficult thing here is that you really can't discuss the conditions with someone else fishing the same lake. That's because you are alone on the lake! It's a nice thing, but you can be doing things quite wrong with no feedback. You really can't tell whether you need to correct your rig, your spot or feeding methods...

But when you get it right, you can be very successful even in the hard waters of Finland.