Fishing Sept.24 2016

So,after last weekends awesome fishing I had some mixed feelings when I was rigging my kayak on a pitch black shore in a shine of a head lamp at 5 am.
Had high hopes but on the other hand it felt too good to be happen too often.33 pikes on one day doesn't happen every day,at least for me.
Have had a quick breakfast in form of coffee and a sandwich while I was driving so I was ready in just minutes to hit the water,a result of lot of practice here.

My planning for this ordinary Saturday fishing started right after I finished last time fishing.
It started in form of some fly tying,unfortunately I could not tie all the flies I had in mind because the post office managed to lost one of my packages but could tie at least three new flies.

Flies I was missing was some "bottom crawlers" but you all know it isn't too hard to go deep so no big deal,Sink lines and XXL coneheads work too.

Noticed a comparatively hard wind already early in the morning and I knew it was to increase later but didn't wanted to worry about things I could not affect to.

Pretty long way to paddle and even if I had some tail wind it took me about 35 minutes before I arrived to my first spot.

First cast and almost immediately BAM and a big swirl was all I saw and unfortunately also what I got,new cast and this time I managed to hook her up,what a start.

After this I moved maybe 50 meter further,anchored and not many casts before I landed my second fish.(not a monster but think she was the biggest of the day?)

I fished a reed bank about 3 kilometer long and landed a hefty 17 fishes in just maybe one and a half hour,decided it was time for a coffee break,felt I deserved it.

Weather start to be a bit chilly here so I decided to take a walk to get circulatory working again,got some fever and flu so it felt colder than it actually was.

Some of you might know I have travel a lot when I worked as a technical worker for many years,I have seen so many beautiful countries but to see these kinda sights always make me speechless,

For me there's nothing more beautiful than Finnish rugged archipelago at fall,it's just too hard to capture the feeling on pics,it's something that you need to undergo by yourself.

After a break I continued to hammer the same reed bank,fishing became a bit slower so I tried different flies,also downsized them a bit but no matter what,one fly was just outstanding.

At this point the fly looked a bit hammered but still going strong.
Think i was up to 20 pikes landed when my friend arrived and we continued along the bank further up,actually we continued further up so we came to a totally new area and even if fishing had become slower we managed to land more fishes.

Nasty scars on this one.

This was fun even if the size wasn't XL.
I was up to 37 pikes when I decided to go only for size,my friend came behind,I fished from a drifting yak while my friend fished from anchored one,this is a boring place to fish which often result in nothing or big.
Don't know how many casts before I felt an angry take but missed that one a quick new cast and now I hooked her,not a monster but a decent sized at least.

Minutes later I dropped one and soon after I heard some curse words behind me,my friend had a heavy hit on his McRubber but it all ended in a shredded lure and a dropped fish.

I was about to take a new drift but changed my mind and went in among reeds instead,I went a bit greedy here...two fishes from 40......

Number 39 came actually pretty quick but clock was ticking and we were in the twilight already and 5-6 km to paddle,I was hungry,I was tired and my shoulder and my wrist was aching pretty bad,Should always remember to keep those damn breaks now and then,even when fishing is good...
Decided to drift along a reed bank on our way back,very soon my friend landed a fish 6,5 kilo/93 cm  which was the biggest of the day,I felt I was loosing focus because of tiredness,fever and aching muscles,dropped two but managed to finally land my fish number 40

Now it was time to put an end on the fishing and paddle back,it was pitch black when I went out and it was pitch black when I came back,
I haven't felt so exhausted after fishing for a long time,16 hours of casting big flies and almost 17 km paddling nearly killed me.Driving back home 40 km was a pain in the ass,unpack all your gear etc,etc...pheeew...
but after all,I would lie if I was saying it wasn't fun,it really was,one of my fly was badly hammered,actually so bad there wasn't much left of it except the wiggle tail

And of course "Pike fingerz" is a sign of a good day.

Fishing just can't keep going this way,it just have to get at least a bit worse but at the moment I'm gonna enjoy it and have collect some inspiration to tie some new flies and as soon as I get more material I will tie some Niklaus Bauer inspired "bottom crawlers" too.

Trace wire update

Have wrote about it for couple of times so I'm not gonna start all over again.
just gonna do an update.
In  search for the perfect trace wire or at least worth the money you spend  I ran onto a wire called G.T.R ,not a unknown brand for me because I'm using their snap locks for Wiggle tails

Even my old fav AFW bleeding wire hasn't been top notch for a while and some wires have been kinked after just couple of fishes.
Well,some people says it's just good for the movement of the fly..might be but for some reason I don't like kinked wires with lack of coating.

Anyway,G.T.R was the name of the game,bought a coil of  three meter (9ft) for 8.95€ which imo is reasonable compared to the quality.

This wire can be bought in some thinner versions too but I got a hefty 41 kg (90 lb) version of it.
It's soft and because of the thickness it's easy to weld,in fact much easier than thinner wires

Have fished with this wire for two weekends and landed about 70 pikes and and the wire I used is good as new.
Will try out their thinner versions too as soon as I finished this coil.
tried new snap locks too from Mustad in sizes 2-3 and 3-4 both with and without a swivel,nothing to complain about any of them either.

Fly tying

Have been so excited lately when fishing has been so good and excitement have also spread out over my fly tying which I think is pretty normal.
Got me a awesome package from http://www.jerkbaitmania.co.uk/ filled with some goodies and of course I wanted to tie up something.

I have tied with the traditional "Pike Skinz" fibre before but like always,when you get your hands on some new packages you just have to......
Here's something I came up with.

All in one portrait.

Fished with these tubes last weekend with good results.They get a awesome action with a conehead in front.

What I'm really excited about is the new "Bucktail blend" (not sure if it's official name) a synthetic fiber which is pretty cool to tie in with bucktail,gives a lot of movement and volume,got a lot of it in different colors so I will surely do some experiments this fall.

Here's one fly were I used it to add some size and volume on it,also added a wiggle tail on this so it measure +12 inch and I really have high hopes on this.

It's articulated.
Rear hook on a Varivas Big mouth 5/0 and front hook on a Sakuma 545 5/0
4 bunches of bucktail + blends
Flash
Jumbo slim Wiggle tail

That's all for now,hopefully this week will end quick enough,I'm burning for going out swing these flies for all big mam's out there.

Fishing Sept.17 2016

Not often a week had felt so long as the last one,even if I were a bit busy time was just dragging on and I was very pleased when I drove home from work on Friday,forecast promised pretty good weather for fishing,northern wind 3-4 m/s,cloudy but no rain and on top of that water level was normal.I had a good feeling.

There was just one small issue....I had no plans were I was to fish,earlier at the week I planned to go back to some areas I used to fish for years but last weekends good results made me think should I go back to same area,good place but a long way to paddle.Also big risk for murky water.

It all ended up that early next morning while I was driving I still had not decided were to go.

Because there wasn't much of wind I decided about 200 meters before a junction to fish same area that I fished last weekend.

About 35 minutes later I hit the water.

As you can see there wasn't much wind.

I had in mind to spent the day searching only for the big one,I knew a area were you would either get a big bite or blank,that was all up if the big mam's were feeding and if I could find them.

To find them I had to first find baitfish which was pretty easy,you could see them miles away feeding from a calm surface,after that it was just to cast out your fly on the edges of the flock and hope for the best.

Have to say it feels very strange to just cast out your fly without any point of reference,I'm so used to fish reedbanks and pockets.I find it hard to believe in this kinda fishing but only third cast and I felt a good bite on the fly and minutes later I landed a pretty decent sized fish,not a "monster" so I didn't measure or scale it anyhow.

What a start to the day.Probably There was so much noise while landing this one so even if I fished same place for a while I didn't found any action.

Time for a cup of coffee,this fish already made my day.

While drinking coffee I tried to see some action on a totally calm surface and about 150 meter in front of me I saw a cascade of water when a predator attacked those poor baitfishes feeding close to the surface,started to paddle....

Came about 30 meter from the big school and cast out my fly as long as I could,took about 5 or 6 casts before I once again felt a heavy bite,cool...

Smaller than the first one but fought much harder,tried to measure her but she wasn't on a "co-operate mood" so 91 cm can't be written as a truth but..who cares.

The wind was increasing a bit so it went harder and harder to locate feeding schools and it took me a while before I managed to land my third with this method.

There was a wind around promised 3-4 m/s now so even if I tried and tried I didn't managed to catch with this method anymore I just thought a sonar with a structure scan would be a massive help now but I don't got one so I decided to go into the reeds for numbers instead,who knows,with a bit of luck I could catch big there too,have done it before.

Had me some coffee and sandwiches before I started to hammer the reed banks and even if I promised my wife that I will soon come home I simply had so much fun I was out for over 12 hours and managed to land one decent fish among all reeds too.

Well,I would lie if I said that it was an ordinary day out,33 fishes landed and couple dropped too is a super good day for me and I can't be anything less than happy with my fishing.

I don't want to sound ungrateful but that BIG Perch I dropped close to my yak....gosh I wish I could managed to land her....

I think I don't have to tell you I paddled back as a very happy man despite aching  muscles. 

Fishing Sept.10 2016

Well,last time I visited same spot i decided to fish this weekend strong wind ruin everything but now conditions seemed to be perfect for fly fishing.
3-4 m/s wind from west which was perfect for this place,makes a lot of new spots for me which was impossible to fish last time.
Was very early out,actually before sunrise,to paddle at that time include something magic imo,everything is so quite and peaceful,took some pics on my way to the final destination,hard to capture the feeling but I did my best.

Had to paddle a long way before I arrived to my planned fishing area,had in mind to check out some new spots a bit further also but started on places I fished last time and landed some jacks every now and then but overall fishing was very slow.
So far no wind and some sunshine combined with very murky water didn't raise my expectations very much either.
Thanks to the long time since I was out I managed to keep me focused and took some coffee breaks too and tried to solve out what to do next,changing location was out of question due to the long way back so I decided to just fish new spots in same area.
While having a break I suddenly felt a slight breeze which soon started to look like a wind...now we talkin.

I was paddling across a bay when I suddenly saw a calm place almost in middle of it and when I came closer I saw a small area with pretty much reed just under the surface with some single strands here and there,should I give it a try ? why not I thought and fished from a slowly drifting kayak.
Wasn't expecting anything so I almost shit my pants when I felt something at the other end of the line,was I snagged ? Hell no,second after Hell broke loose,This was a strong one,for a second I was to drop the anchor but in the middle of a bay I thought I could handle the situation without it so I fought the fish from a drifting yak and dropped the anchor only when I had a beautiful Ma'm in my brand new landing net.

Had her to rest in the net while making everything ready for a pic or two.

What a nice surprise this was,felt strange to bomb this place without any bench mark,just casting your fly out as long as I managed,let it sink for couple of seconds and started to retrieving and,BOOM.
Even if I felt this was just a lucky shot I decided to do couple more casts and parked the yak on the edge of this area and three or four casts later I once again hooked up an angry Ma'm,not as big as the first but a nice fish anyway.

Big head but very skinny,but anyway,two nice fishes landed from a spot I never though I would fish,not bad.
Fished this area for a while but without any results and also my focus was on those two beauties landed so decided to slowly start to paddle back and enjoy the rest of the day thinking of how good this day had been.

Fly tying

At some point I made a promise I would not tie flies during the fishing season but that was before I bought Bob Popovics new book and enthuse over all kinda bucktail ties,not long ago I used bucktail only to get volume in my flies,nowadays it's the most important material for me,also Andy Warshawer and Jari Koski,Jussi Laitala among many others has been a great inspiration for my tying lately not to mention a Finnish Facebook group "Hauen perhokalastajat"/Northern pike fly fishing Finland with so many great tyers and ideas,it's a AWESOME !!! group.
So no wonder why I have been so excited about fly tying lately.

If I only had patience to tidy everything afterward,it can be kinda annoying to start create a vision you had for some days when your lab looks like this.
Even if I have tied more of different bucktail ties I have also tried on some synthetics and some "Bauer style" flies,both on tubes and hooks.

These are tied using Pike Skinz synthetic fibre,from Jerkbaitmania UK.I like their big amount of colors.
They also got a new product,"Bucktail blend" which I'm waiting to get my hands on.

Haven't tied much of tube flies lately Because I got a LOT !!!! of them.
Wrote some time ago it's soon time to start using them and thought it cold be good to sort them out a bit and was a bit surprised how many I had in same colors,well,have to say I love copper,gold,greenish colors anyway so I guess you can never have too many.

I have also started to fish more with a pattern we tied on Niklaus Bauer tying course,and with good results so I had to tie some more,with a little twist,more light dressed.

And as you can see it's also in brown/copper color =D
But hey,tied one in other colors too.

But a pattern I have tied most this season is absolutely variants of Bob Popovics "Beast fleye" imo a superb pattern for my fishing,easy to cast,good profile and catch so well,hard to beat even if it's a bit tricky to tie but after some practicing and good tips from the maestro himself has helped me a lot and nowadays I find it well worth the effort to tie these pike magnets,have also ventured to try out some different materials beside the bucktail in these ties like ostrich etc...

 I have started to blend more different colors which give me some more cool color options.
Noticed that when blending bucktail I have it very easy to "overdress" the fly but think I have sort of overcome that issue after I recieved a imo very good tip from a experienced tyer.
Simply just cut and blend ready bunches before tying them,easy to check both size and colors,it also makes my tying faster.

Also got a very useful tip of try to tie this pattern more sparse,and even if I thought I could not go more sparse I tried and found out that I could go much more sparse,I mean it's amazing how sparse bundles you can tie on this pattern and still get the big profile I'm looking for.

Very happy of all kind tips I have received from so many tiers out there,can't describe the feeling when I feel happy to take a seat behind the vice,not forced to tie something.