All Fish Are Equal

Every now and then, I find pictures on the Internet where people are abusing/disrespecting their unwanted fish species or a fish below target/specimen size. I find this attitude disturbing. 

A fish, no matter its size or species, is still a fish. A fisherman should ALWAYS respect their catches, no matter what they catch. 

I always treat the fish I catch with the same procedure (of course I don't use unhooking mats for 20 gram roach, you silly). Fish welfare is a priority, even when I catch a small gudgeon while barbel fishing or a 600 gram ide while targeting carp.

Naturally, I oppose using livebaits. I don't know how many pike anglers would like me to hook a 10 kg pike from it's mouth and back ... just to "have a big bait". It is not just disrespectful and inhumane thing to do for the fish, but it is more like being in the stone age of fishing culture. It doesn't matter whether the live fish struggling in the hook is a 10 kg pike or a 100 g perch - it's still a barbaric thing to do. (Don't even get me started on the ethics of C&R predator fishing with livebaits. There is absolutely no point there.)

A true modern fisherman has a strong respect for every fish. All fish are equal.

Bream might be a nuisance fish while carp fishing. How we treat the unwanted catches define us as fishermen.

Big Fish Still Get Slaughtered...

Hi all!

This post will be quite grim, and I already warn my readers abroad:This post has a link to a big dead carp... Yet again, Finns have been skillful enough to fill lakes with all-killing gill nets. They are commonly using them to catch "trophy fish". This makes no sense at all - a fish caught with a gill net requires no skill at all. It just kills everything that swims in it. Even our Saimaa ringed seal.

That's enough of the almost-extinct endemic seal species - and on with the ramblings about carp. So a carp that was claimed to be the biggest fish in Finland was caught and killed. To the catchers excuse, he wasn't actually trying to catch a carp. To make things worse, the biggest tench in Finland was ALSO caught a few weeks ago with a gill net. This tench was caught and killed intentionally. Just to claim the record. What a sporty way of catching record fish! Yay!

Big fish are really important to the ecosystem in numerous ways. It is really important to release them every time it's possible. 

A nice common carp going back to do what he/she does best (that is being a big fish).

Ps. The carp in the magazine was claimed to be "closer to 50kg than 20 kg..." Yeah - right.

The Importance of Catch and Release

Dear Readers,

I was just thinking if I would write about this issue in some magazine, but I reckon this is the best way to deliver the message. As I have previously written, catch and release fishing (C&R) is quite a new thing in Finland, and coarse fish are mostly regarded as trash. Well, here is a series of photos to point out how C&R can be sustainable when done in the right way. This photo series is about the same carp caught in three consecutive years. The fish has been putting on weight every year.

Linear carp "Pöhkis" aka. Simpleton in 2011

Linear carp "Pöhkis" aka. Simpleton in 2012.

Linear carp "Pöhkis" aka. Simpleton in 2013

I already wrote in my earlier blog about the ESSENTIAL TACKLE considering fish welfare. C&R is not a religion about tossing the fish back in the water, it is about the best practice getting the fish back into the water. I really insist that all people doing C&R or selective fishing should pay attention to fish welfare. For instance, a lot of Finnish pike anglers don't have an unhooking mat. That is totally wrong. The boat floor is not the right place to handle a fish. Without the protection of the unhooking mat, the fish will loose a lot of its mucus layer. The mucus layer is really important for the fish, as it protects the fish from infections and parasites. 

What I always bring with me when I am fishing (fish welfare tackle):

- Big knotless landing net (Prologic XLNT)

- Landing mat (Prologic Inflatable with small walls)

- Weight sling (Prologic)

- Forceps & disgorger

- Camera tripod (and a lot of technical gimmicks to get the photo taken really fast)

These things are not lightweight. But it is the price you have to pay for fish welfare. If you are not ready to carry several kilos of fish welfare tackle, you should not be fishing at all. After all, it should be about fish welfare, not fisherman welfare. 

Sweat & tears (no blood) - C&R done properly!

The Importance of Catch And Release

Dear Readers,

The upcoming season has got the grip on me. No hope of going ice-fishing, as I think only carp. A sad story, yes, but still it's nice to be obsessed. Obsession is way better than depression. A summer person can't be too happy in Finland, so just thinking of summer gets me going.

Anyways, I have something to say. Every now and then someone catches a carp by accident. I mean here in Finland, almost all of the carp are caught without intention. Sometimes by foul-hooking on lures, on gill-nets, etc. Way too many of these carp are killed, usually just to be photographed for a local newspaper. And that is a pity, as people should know better. Carp is not the best fish for consumption anyway. We have zander and perch for that.

My message is actually a competition. Carp Of The Thousand Lakes will give (to be precise, I will) a prize for the best Catch&Release Finnish carp for 2013. The best C&R is not determined merely by the carps weight. The "competition" will be called "COTTL Let It Go".

Just Let It Go...

One beautiful mirror carp on its way back home.

Pic Or It Didn't Happen

Dear Readers,

Yet a few weeks has passed and I have something to say again. We are having an early winter and the temperatures have been even -10 Celcius. Now it's a bit warmer, but how long, I can't say.

The season 2012 was ok. Didn't fish as much as I would've wanted, but still I managed to get some good experience and some nice fish. Don't get me wrong, me and my fishing friends managed to land very nice fish. Only some of them have been portrayed on my blog.

I don't actually want to keep an accurate record of my catches nor do I want to share all of them with the rest of the world. Sometimes it's better to keep low profile even in the case of success. I can say I catch carp on a constant basis, which is somewhat of a miracle in Finnish waters. But I don't want to shout out too much of my catches. There is a fine line between writing a blog and showboating.

I mean if I just report every single fish I catch on every possible forum, it would eventually get attention from the wrong people. I like that carper number is growing steadily and slowly here. I don't want it to become a mass sport overnight. If and when people start carping, they would know the tackle better and take better care of the fish. I have read too many stories of catch & kill carp stories from Finland that I don't really want to cause a hysteria of carp angling. In my opinion, slow evolution is the way to go.

All in all, Finnish carp are smaller than their southern relatives and more rarely caught. Despite of that I think carp fishing in Finland is the best carping in the world.

By saying this, here's another pic of a carp (not)

The Night Of The Living Mosquitoes

I had been prebaiting my swim for a week with DD Bait Feedermix and boilies. A few kilos of Freshwater Snail Feedermix and about 2-3 kg of boilies every other day. The boilies I choose for prebaiting were the Banana&Crustacean and Red Bull Guana. I was really looking forward to fishing the spot, as I have succeeded there almost every time.

The night of fishing came, but it was actually a night of terror, as mosquitoes were trying to take over the world. Literally, there were hundreds of them just waiting to feed on me. Taking some pain and around hundred mosquito bites, I managed to set my rods and my bivvie. So it was just a waiting game then. I managed to get some sleep, and around 4 am, I woke up to my alarm going off!

I hurried to my rods and saw the right rod going off in a good speed. But I also found out that my left rod had lost 100 m of line and it was pointing to another direction I cast it to… I took the rod on the right and landed a beautiful mirror carp. It was in really good condition after spawning, and by the looks of her, the boilies had been very tasty…

After that I started to work with my left rod. The rig was probably stuck in tens of waterlilies, so I pulled the line to cut off the lilies. One by one, I managed to get the rig closer. It took around 15 minutes, and I put very heavy strain on the Prologic XLNT Camo monofilament. Suddenly the rig was loose of the weeds, but I also realized that the fish was still on! My situation was quite tricky, as I had my landing net occupied with the previous carp… After some hectic (and not so educational) close quarters battle with the carp, I managed to get her also in my landing net. A landing net can get crowded… But to cut a story short, the lean and mean fighting machine common carp was 12,3 kg. Both of the fish were caught with a combination of DD Bait Red Bull Guana and Banana Crustacean boilie.

Valuation of the Catch

Spring has been delayed a bit, as we still had more snow. I am getting frustrated, as I remember that early May has always started my stillwater season. Let's see if the ice is going to melt in the next three weeks...

Anyway, on with my ramblings. I have been asking myself questions about what should we value in our carp catches. I think when considering just the fish and it's value, it can be divided into three things: weight, looks and the strength of the fish. Take away any of these three values, and you can easily understand what my point is. If you get a monster fish, that fights well, but looks like... well... a monster (in a bad sense), you won't be satisfied with the catch. I have seen numerous pictures of carp that shouldn't have been photographed at all. 

If you catch a nice-looking small fighter, you wish it had been bigger? What about if your carp record, beautifully formed would just wobble into the net, without putting up a scrap...

It's not rocket science, but I reckon people tend to value these things differently. My valuation is biased to having good fighting carp on the end of my line. If I just want to hold something heavy in my hands, I think I'll try to lift my car... Don't get me wrong, of course I love catching big carp.

I think I caught the hardest fighting carp ever last summer. It was the same night I had a double run... But anyway, I woke up to my alarm. When I got to my pod, the carp had ripped easily 50 m of line from my spool. I lifted the rod and set on the drag. The carp just went on... I put on more drag force and tried to increase the pressure with my forefinger...  The carp just went on.

After I had taken the rod into my hands, the fish took 50 m of line before it stopped! And I had my 0,40 mm mono screaming for mercy all the time! After it stopped it had me fighting for every meter of line. At the time I had it in my landing net, I was completely exhausted. My shoulders were sore and numb. The fish was about 8,5 kg. But it had been the toughest of them all. Trust me, I will remember that fish until the day I die.

Common carp tend to put a harder fight than mirrors or leathers. All released with the hope of seeing again someday...

600 hours = one carp

Carp fishing in Finland is just as it should be. Basically there are no commercial waters (except a few ones, which are under very low fishing pressure). What we have in Finland is 187 000 lakes of over 500 square meters. Of that huge amount of lakes, hundreds are stocked with carp. These lakes are mostly situated in Southern Finland.

On most occasions, there are no official records of carp stockings. In some cases there are some official markings of when and where some amounts of carp were put. Usually they have never been fished for carp since the stocking occured.

So when I start to fish a new lake, it is always a mystery to be solved. Where in particular the carp of this lake like to feed... or are there any carp left? So when I wake up in the middle of the night because of my bite alarm going crazy, it's a lot more that just catching a carp... It's more like a discovery!

Sometimes it's a struggle with long times of blanking. This summer started with ending a streak of ca. 600 hours of blanking! The unhappy time ended with me catching a 9 kg dark-marble coloured mirror! Oh the joy and disbelief! I already thought my bite alarms were jinxed...

But as H.T. Sheringham once wrote:

Carp Table

One day = eighteen hours. *

Eighteen hours = one potato

Ten years = one carp

*summer calculation

Carp fishing in my opinion shouldn't be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. It SHOULD be difficult, and EVERY bite should be considered as "happy time". Big fish I like, but chasing PBs is just one way of carp fishing. I don't find that kind very rewarding. Learning is rewarding, and discovery.

In this photo is the remarkable fish that ended my epic blanking streak. I'm not fishing the lake at the moment, so let's see if I am returning to that lake again some year. 

Spreading the Word

Carp fishing isn't well known in Finland. Actually, the number of carp anglers is counted in tens. No, not thousands. Just a few fanatics are doing it and they are mostly regarded really eccentric because they are fishing for cyprinids. In Finland cyprinids are mostly considered lesser species with low value in sport fishing.

In my opinion, more people should know about coarse & carp fishing. What I've done is that I have been an educator on a few angling nights on a carp lake. People are attending nicely, and this year was the third year of educating new carp anglers. And we've managed to get new anglers every year. That is good. It's also good to catch something when fishing. The carp in the photo was caught after the next morning after the angling night. It was 4,6 kg (ca. 10 lbs). Beautiful fish! 

A fully scaled double figure common  is always a nice catch. Would like to catch a 30lb fully scaled...

This year I also did a publicity angling day where a lot of people came to see carp fishing. Also I had time on the radio and newspapers. It was kinda silly, as I didn't know any of that in advance. Answering questions about the ethics of c&r-fishing is quite difficult. Especially when it is going to be broadcast on the radio. Luckily I think I managed well. :)

Cheers and tight lines- Henrik

My first carp ever

There isn't an experience like catching your first carp. It is really something, especially when you have never seen one before.

My first carp was on the first day of August 2007. I prebaited the swim earlier that day, and somehow I decided to go night fishing. It was already getting dark when I arrived.

I set my cheap wannabe-rodpod on the bank and cast the first rod out. The rod was actually a light/medium action match rod, which had absolutely nothing to do with carp tackle. The reel was 1500-sized fixed-spool reel. It held about 80 m of 0,28 mm monofilament. A real treat for handling hard fighting big carp!

But what happened next was a bit of a mystery. After casting the first rod out, I started to assemble my carp landing net. It was my new 52" net, so I wouldn't have any problems in fitting the possible carp in the net. (How wrong was I then...) I tried to put the pieces together in the landing net, when suddenly all the world just flashed. I mean, a sudden bright flash just amazed me in the night. I really don't know what that was.

After regaining my focus, I tried to put the landing net together. Again, I was interrupted...by my bite alarm! It just went totally crazy, bleep after bleep. The rush was so fast. I jumped on to my rod and lifted it up and hooked the fish. My reels drag was set really loose, so I tightened it. The fish went on with the long rush. I tightened the drag even more. Suddenly I realized that something was wrong with my reel. The drag knob was broken, as I couldn't put on more drag force. Just a couple of seconds later, I realized the drag force was on full and the fish just went on.

A couple of meters later and with a bit loosened drag force, I started to do a tug-of-war with the fish. I had no idea what species the fish was. At last, after a lot of minutes, I gained the upper hand in the fight. When I got the fishes head up, I was in awe. The barbs of the carp were pointing up to the already starlit sky. It looked like an ancient creature, a dragon from another world. Carp! It was a carp! My knees went wobbly, and I really needed to land this fish.

Too bad the landing net wasn't set up. I had to keep the net open with my fingers, so getting the fish to the bank was easier said than done. Luckily after a few attempts I managed to get the carp into the net.

I took a few photos (weight was 7,5 kg which is about 16½ lbs), and released the fish. I hadn't caught the fish, it had caught me.