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.

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.

Midsummer Nights (and Jinxed Again!)

Dear Readers,

Midsummer nights in Finland are really different from nights in Southern Europe. It really doesn't get dark even at midnight, and time has less meaning. But as much as I love the bright night skies, I still prefer the embracing darkness of August nights.

Midnight "darkness"...

My brother caught a big carp on a trip with me. I seem to have been jinxed again! My trips with my brothers have been really good, but not for me. If my calculations are correct, I have blanked on nine (9!) consecutive trips with my brothers. My misfortune seems to be of a very personal kind, as all of my brothers have been catching quite good. I hope I can lift this curse...

Fishing Books Worth Reading

Hi all!

I just wanted to share a picture of my Chris Yates collection (plus a few quality books by other great writers). For all of you who are yet to read one of Chris' books, I can recommend strongly doing that. Chris has a good sense of humor and his story-telling abilities are beyond my reviews. He also has a lesson for those anglers "who know it all" [at least I learned something].

One of these books has my name in it!

I share the angling philosophy Chris states on his books but I still love to use new tackle and technological gimmicks. A guy like me in his 30's isn't very credible using old tackle twice his age. For now, maybe I'll just be quiet and go a-angling.

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. 

Slovenian Expedition Part I: The First Carp

Dear readers,

My previous seasons didn't start as I had planned. Way too much blanking in rainy weather and changing temperatures. Last autumn I chatted with a Prologic team member David Primozic, and he invited me to Slovenia. It was hard to resist, as I had already planned to go fishing abroad. So we discussed further and decided that we will fish lake Smartinsko. To make things easier, we discussed that I travel by plane and take only the essentials with me. No hassle with rods, bivvies, or driving through Europe. Just a direct flight from Helsinki to Ljubljana. And David had the small task of bringing a LOT of stuff to the lake.

I am NOT sponsored by Finnair, but it would be nice. This is the easier way instead of driving...

Somewhere above Poland, Austria or Slovenia... 

Seeing green forests and snow-topped mountains at the same time was something new for me. Already in the plane I knew I was going to love this country and its nature. After a nice flight David picked me up from the airport. An hours drive to the lake and we were ready to start fishing. It was already quite late when we arrived, so we  got the rods out and started our waiting game. The only bad thing was that we woke up the next morning, and that means we didn't get any runs during the first night. I wasn't nervous at all, because I knew our spot wasn't fished for a longer time, and it always takes some time to get the fish feeding on your spot.

No carp yet, so I lied in the blog title. Maybe the second part will have more fish in it... :) (Sorry about the crappy photos, they were taken with my Sony POS phone.)

First Carp of 2014

Hi all!

I started my season abroad with this carp... We caught several more, and a full report will follow.

Smartinsko lake beauty.