Lovisa 28.4 2012

Gave the title of this post a long thought because....well it was nice to get out with my boat on familiar water but in other ways it was kinda disaster. The weather,sunny,warm and very windy,once again:fuck the forecasts,before I went fishing it says 4-6 m/s,3 hours later 9-11 m/s,it´s ridiculous. Well the water then,murky,turbid.forgot to take my sonar with me so i don´t know the water temp but it was cold,if you don´t believe just ask my friend who was with me :))) And the fishing:not much to tell you about,we fished on windy sides,on calm sides,low water and deep water,among water plants,on open water and in rocky water,and the result was:Not a single hit either on flies or jerk baits and lures. One hit with the boat on a underwater rock and as a nice end of this trip my friend fell in water when we tried to dock for a lunch/toilet break. Right now I´m so disappointed and pissed of i don´t know will I fish today on Sunday or will I leave it to next weekend. This is exactly the reason I hate to get those skyhigh expectations for any trip,the disappointment can be huge,well,i guess things will get better,there´s a long season ahead to go,here´s some photo shoots from lovisa archipelago.

Getting ready to rock.

We live exciting times right now,THREE !!!!!! fuckin nights to go.I can hardly wait.Had some boat maintenance many days in row now and tomorrow it should finally be ready. Spark plugs,oils,some adjustments and finally new support wheels on my trailer was on todays list.

And believe me or not but I am a gentleman,don´t laugh,I really am,I washed my boat so that I don´t have to feel ashamed when I´ll ask some big mam to visit inside of it.

Oh fuckin yes,expectations are skyhigh at the moment,should really calm down now but it´s too hard.Wanna get rid of that monkey sitting on my back. Lines are ready,reels are ready,rods are ready,clothes are ready.Almost everything is ready,I could tie some flies more... And you,master of forecast...DON`T MESS WITH ME NOW :)Still lookin good...

Familiar waters

Next weekend I will launch my boat in Lovisa and I am sooooooo excited already,five nights to go,please let them go fast.The forecast who never lie to me said 16 degrees,cloudy and a wind about 5 m/s so even if I don´t wanna think of it my expectations sneaking higher and higher all the time,better to put some ice in the trousers at this stage,plenty of things can happen before weekend. Still got some maintenance to do on the boat before it´s ready but it should be an easy gig. A thing that wasn´t too easy was to get my boat dragged away from a slippery lawn,not even with my 4WD van.

It sure looked easy but...

Wasn´t able to get any longer so had to leave it to the next day when i was able to loan a car from my work. And today I came with a better car and had no troubles at all so i should easily sort out everything before weekend.

Not much more to tell you about right now I´m afraid,have been very lacy with tying but today the mailman brought me a package from Nordic angler so I hope I have some time/inspiration to tie some killers before weekend.

The REAL opener 14 April 2012 in Tirmo

I had set my sights for a pikeride next weekend so I was a bit surprised but also pleased when my brother called me at Wednesday If I would like to go out to see if there`s any ice left on some of his hot spots,well,after a long conversation (two seconds) I promised that it´s okay to go fishing next Saturday(today). I didn´t sleep very well the night between Friday and Saturday preparing myself for the forthcoming session. Woke up 5.00am and made me some coffee and sandwiches and after a quick breakfast I was on my way to a place called Tirmo near Porvoo.I felt very pleased while I was driving along the highway in a nice fishing weather,+3 degrees,a small breeze,maybe 5-6 m/s and rain,I met my brother 6.30am at the shore and after we packed the boat we went out driving in middle of ice floes,the rain had stopped and it was kinda foggy,felt like i was at Titanic :). Very soon we noticed that all the smaller sheltered bays had a ice blanket on so we just had to try to find some other places but we didn´t found any potential good looking places without ice so we were forced to fish on places were we were almost sure there will be no fishes at all but who cares,I had not any skyhigh expectations from the start,it just feels so good to be able to lay some line with a decent sized fly on the other end of it. Here is my first casts for this season chasing pike.

And we were fishing on a place looking like this,nothing wrong with it but it´s not far from a ferry going between Tirmo and Pellinki so the noice disturbed at least me a bit.

I would have prefer to go a little bit deeper into that bay but....the ice again....

Then we drove around for a while until we ended up on a place like this.

We spent the rest of the day here because it was no idea of driving around and around just to see there´s no entry to all really good looking hot spots.Next week it should look totally different,my brother was practicing his casting skills and I tested different rod/line combos and of course I put my winter tied flies in swimming school and made some notices especially about my big daddy #9 rod,first when I used a #9 weight line(21g/323gr)It didn´t felt good in MY hands,but when I combined it with a custom made line (24-26 g)it turned into a very,VERY comfortable combo,very nice and useful to do some tests with your lines/rods,at least for me because if i ever break my favorite rod Vision GT4 I know I have a combo to put in instead. The second thing I noticed was about a one of my flies tied with Body fibre,it turned almost invisible in water,strange :)

We spent six hours at sea and in these conditions it was enough for both of us,even if I didn´t have any sense in my fingers until several hours after arriving back to the shore I feel sooooooo relaxed and I enjoyed every minute of this trip and can hardly wait for the next weekend when I hopefully are able to launch my own boat and hopefully get the monkey of my back :) Here is some more photos to watch.

And finally my "ghosthand".The water temp was between 2.9 and 3.6 degrees,so it will take some time before Pikes will go spawning,think it will happen when water temp is between 6-10 degrees ?

Still waiting....

As it look now it might be possible to go out fishing for pike after a week or two,days are mostly warm but -10 degrees at nights makes the ice melting a bit slower but before May it should be melted away so it´s about same time as last year when my season starts for real. Well there has been time for boat maintenance and some tying and tomorrow if everything go as I planned I will go fishing to Lauttasaari again,or should I say practicing my casting skills,don´t really believe I could get any fish from there. Have tried some different patterns but to be honest I have not felt comfortable whit any of them,difficult to explain,I mean...I read a nice article from Markus Männistö who is an experienced pikefisher and he published a SBS guide of his slinky tube,it´s not that I don´t believe in that pattern,it sure works,no doubt about that.I just don´t like to do an exact copy of some pattern,want to put something "own" in it too. Anyway,that article inspired me to tie this one.

As you can see it´s not a lookalike but you also can see the influence from that pattern. Another thing that creeps in my mind over and over is the size of the flies.As I wrote in my last post I have tied some smaller flies on tube too and now I tied some more of my favourites in two sizes to test if the big one is really better......

I´m not going to do any rocket science about this "test" I´m just curious to see if there´s big differences in catches. Also bought me some new tackleboxes and now I have sorted out my flies and my season will be dominated by two patterns.One is inspired from Niklaus Bauers Transformer fly and the second is a mix inspired from Niklaus Bauers Sheephead and from the same guys another fly which name I don´t know,added with some influence from Simon Grahams Replot stinger.Of these three flies I have grabbed a bit of this and a bit of that and call it Regret,now in tube version.

And finally gonna end this nagging again for a while with a photo that shows you that even if I bought some new boxes or cleaned my tying corner I will certainly need more space soon....Something to planning for next winter.

Too much thoughts instead of fishing.

While writing this post every Pikefishers beloved springtime has take some steps backward.Last week it really looked good and I already had a hope that I would have been able to launch my boat this or maybe next week but yesterday I woke up at 3.30 am and noticed that my black backyard had turn to white in form of 10 cm thick blanket of snow,in middle of Finland it was worse than so,up to 20 cm snow.I can´t describe the feeling I had while driving to work in that heavy snowfall. Well,hopefully it was the last time for a while when I have to wake up in the middle of the night and go to work and plowing snow.It might be so but looking at forecasts I just wanna cry :((( -10 degrees promised tomorrow morning.Oh fuckin shit is all I can say!!! As I was mentally prepared for a trip to Lovisa archipelago but not be able to do so I have had some time to think some dark thoughts :) and of course tie some flies. To start,I noticed a thing witch I don´t know if it´s good or not:I ran out of Bug Bond so I decided to use my epoxy before I order some more UV-Resin. While I tried to make a nice head to a fly I remember why I quit using epoxy,you all probably know why... But one thing I also noticed is that Bug Bond smells a hell lot more than epoxy.Flies that I tied several months ago still got that smell,unsure whether it affecting my fishing.I have not heard anyone complaining so I think I will still use Bug bond as soon until my epoxy runs out. Here´s some new flies:

This fly seems to be my normal pattern that use to tie but I´ve added some new materials from Nordic Angler called Twisted flash and Glow Hair,Very nice and useful materials both. and a more "normal" fly from my vice.

Then a fly witch in smaller size has caught many Seatrouts (not by me)so in bigger size it could work for Pikes too.Tied this one just for fun and cause I was bored but after a bath test I have some serious thoughts of this pattern too,extremely slow sink might turn this fly to real killer in cold conditions.I know these flies has been used for long time but this the first one from me and if I found quality bucktail I definately will tie some more of these.

Some more thoughts :)...Always when I have bought a new line it has been a line witch the salesmen recommended as a Pikeline like RIO:s Scandinavian Pike or Vision Big Daddy ETC,ETC but I just bought me two new lines:Rio Outbound WF9 F and a RIO Dart WF 8 S3 witch will be tested hopefully soon. I read a simple question about the size of Pikeflies some days ago and it made me think of a post I wrote a long time ago here in this blog. 35 years ago when you went out to catch the monster Pike you used a ABU Atom lure,almost 12 cm:s long and a weight of 42 gram.....In these days you could use it as a Pearch lure,if you belive all those salesmen.Now it seems that Jerkbaits up to 180 gr and 25 cm is most effective,or is it? Don´t know but what I know is that at least my flies has been bigger and bigger all the time.Take a look:

Or even better example :)))

Do they really have to be 18-25 cm:s?I have several times caught a pike with a mouth full of small fishes from 3-4 cm:s long.I have not an answer to this either but anyway I have a box with some smaller(8-10 cm:s)flies tied on a TMC 8089 #2 hook and decided to tie some smaller flies also on tubes here´s one of them:

It´s tied on my favourite synthetic material Body Fibre and is about 10 cm long,at least it will be more easy to cast then those flies big as a Seagulls :) Couple more of these will still be tied. Here you can see the difference between my "normal" flies and the smaller one:

I think it´s enough with complaining for one day now,I´ll have much more in my mind but saving it for the next time :) Thank´s for reading.... I WAN`T TO CHUCK SOME FLUFF.....I would really need it.