Next Sunday - 25th of September - me and Ali are going out pike fishing. We'll go out really early in the morning and fish most of the day. Some uncontrollable variables control if we can fish all day or not, but either way it'll be quite a few hours.
I'll be exciting to see if the pikes are willing to bite or not. Sure, it's fall and they should be pretty 'on', but this fall has been extraordinary warm around here, so it might be that they are still in summer-mode. We'll see.
We will be fishing the river Glomma where I have my boat. We'll hit our favorite spots to start with and then venture out of our comfort zone and go further up-river to try some new spots as well.
Our tactics are as usual - no tactics. We'll do what we feel for there and then - but most likely we'll spin fish a lot and troll a little bit here and there.
A report from this trip will be posted next week. I'll try to be good at taking video with my GoPro and if we are lucky and catch some good action with it, I'll make a video also.
Stay tuned.
Anual fall pass booked
So, for the last 3 years me and a buddy of mine, Dag Ronny, have done a day trip fishing for fall pike. It has become sort of a tradition I guess and I'm really grateful for these trips. It's great fun.
I guess you can say that the fishing hasn't been very great on any of the previous trips really, but we've had a great time anyway.
So, this years trip has been booked (we booked in earlier this summer actually). It will be on either Saturday or Sunday the 2nd weekend of October.
Location is still undetermined and will remain so until maybe the week before. The reason for this is simply that we want to see how the water levels are in the different waters we consider. I'm pretty sure it'll be the river Glomma somewhere or Isesjø - both which we have fished before.
Since the fishing has been pretty poor this summer for me, I have rather high expectations to this trip. It should be a good time to fish for fall pike. They should be hungry and happy to strike... at least I hope so :).
Can't wait!
I guess you can say that the fishing hasn't been very great on any of the previous trips really, but we've had a great time anyway.
So, this years trip has been booked (we booked in earlier this summer actually). It will be on either Saturday or Sunday the 2nd weekend of October.
Location is still undetermined and will remain so until maybe the week before. The reason for this is simply that we want to see how the water levels are in the different waters we consider. I'm pretty sure it'll be the river Glomma somewhere or Isesjø - both which we have fished before.
Since the fishing has been pretty poor this summer for me, I have rather high expectations to this trip. It should be a good time to fish for fall pike. They should be hungry and happy to strike... at least I hope so :).
Can't wait!
Then and now...
I fished quite a bit when I was a kid and in my early youth. When I was out fishing today, my thoughts went back to those days and how different the equipment is now from then.
Of course, back then I didn't have a lot of money to buy a bunch of different gear and baits, but even if I did, the selection in the stores was very limited.
I had a couple of favorite baits back then that I fished all the time and which I bought over and over again when I lost them. For me those were Abu Garcia Hi-Lo (jointed red/white) and a spoon called Lillauren (copper color). These were/are pretty small baits, especially if you compare to what most pike anglers use today.
There are of course split opinions about what size bait catch the bigger fish. Theoretically I really believe that there is no right or wrong answer. Sometimes the big pike prefers large baits and sometimes it prefers a smaller bait. I would say that it depends on how much it has had to eat earlier... obviously! I mean, would you gobble down a large pizza right after you had a XL burger? I don't think so!
Based on my own experience alone, smaller baits have produced the biggest pikes for me. The two biggest were caught on small baits.
Anyways, I still have a couple of Hi-Lo's in my tackle box and honestly, my 2. biggest pike was caught on that lure. My biggest pike was caught on a quite small rubber shad...
Right, so fishing tackle has changed a lot since I was young. There is a wide range of more stuff to choose from in the stores, we have Internet stores now (which also opens up for shopping from foreign stores)...
Of course, having access to so much more stuff is an advantage. No question about that. We have more variety to choose from and that must be a good thing. But at the same time I think that it doesn't make a world of difference. I mean, people have been catching fish for ages and way back in the day, they didn't exactly have the most advanced gear - and yet they caught fish just like we do today.
So, the moral of all this is:
It's possible to have very successful fishing with just the basic gear and lures. But, for me at least, a big part of fishing is collecting all kinds of different lures and fiddling around with it when I'm not fishing (winter for example - to organize lures, sharpen hooks, look at the baits....). That's a big part of it actually.
All right, shit fishing!
Of course, back then I didn't have a lot of money to buy a bunch of different gear and baits, but even if I did, the selection in the stores was very limited.
I had a couple of favorite baits back then that I fished all the time and which I bought over and over again when I lost them. For me those were Abu Garcia Hi-Lo (jointed red/white) and a spoon called Lillauren (copper color). These were/are pretty small baits, especially if you compare to what most pike anglers use today.
There are of course split opinions about what size bait catch the bigger fish. Theoretically I really believe that there is no right or wrong answer. Sometimes the big pike prefers large baits and sometimes it prefers a smaller bait. I would say that it depends on how much it has had to eat earlier... obviously! I mean, would you gobble down a large pizza right after you had a XL burger? I don't think so!
Based on my own experience alone, smaller baits have produced the biggest pikes for me. The two biggest were caught on small baits.
Anyways, I still have a couple of Hi-Lo's in my tackle box and honestly, my 2. biggest pike was caught on that lure. My biggest pike was caught on a quite small rubber shad...
Right, so fishing tackle has changed a lot since I was young. There is a wide range of more stuff to choose from in the stores, we have Internet stores now (which also opens up for shopping from foreign stores)...
Of course, having access to so much more stuff is an advantage. No question about that. We have more variety to choose from and that must be a good thing. But at the same time I think that it doesn't make a world of difference. I mean, people have been catching fish for ages and way back in the day, they didn't exactly have the most advanced gear - and yet they caught fish just like we do today.
So, the moral of all this is:
It's possible to have very successful fishing with just the basic gear and lures. But, for me at least, a big part of fishing is collecting all kinds of different lures and fiddling around with it when I'm not fishing (winter for example - to organize lures, sharpen hooks, look at the baits....). That's a big part of it actually.
All right, shit fishing!
Nedre Glomma Gjeddefestival - report
So, during this last weekend the anual Nedre Glomma Gjeddefestival (Nedre Glomma Pike Festival) was held and Team Riverpigs participated for the second time. We had been looking forward to this event for weeks and this is maybe the highlight of the late summer for us.
This year 51 teams competed - which was a new record (by 15 teams no less) and 104 individuals. Really great. The event got quite a bit of local media coverage also, which is pretty cool. Hopefully this can shed some positive light on pike fishing (and C&R) and maybe also recruit some new anglers.
We packed the car and loaded the boat onto the boat trailer Friday afternoon and headed up to the base camp at Furuholmen (about a 10 minutes drive from where I live). We checked out the camp ground before putting the boat on the water. We got our tents set up and basically just hung around for a while before going to bed. We don't exactly sleep in tends very often, so the first night is usually pretty tough (as in we don't sleep very well). It was really windy Friday night - so that didn't help. But, it doesn't matter much. Waking up bright and early to the sound of exited pike fishers gets the old blood pump going.
We got dressed and started loading and organizing the boat before registration started. New of this year is that every team got a measure board (aluminum I believe) which helps a lot with measuring the fish. The board was to be given back to the organizers after the end of the festival, but it was possible to buy it for 150 kroner.
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| Our tents |
At 09:30 all boats headed out. Fishing started at 10:00.
Our plan for the weekend was to troll a lot and also spin fish known hot spots and other spots we would find interesting (we used the sonar to look for shallows etc.).
We mostly fished Mingevannet and Vestvannet as both are within decent distance from basecamp. The boat we have isn't exactly a speed demon (understatement of the year) so we didn't want to waste too much time driving without fishing. After all, the more the lures are in the water - the greater the chance of catching something.
To cut the story a bit shorter, we didn't have much luck! Fishing was tough. We ended up catching 8 pike during the weekend, but they were all really small. Our biggest fish was 72cm. The winning fish was 112cm. Quite a big difference!
Even though the fishing wasn't all that great for us, the whole thing was still a great experience and we had a lot of fun. Spending two days on the water fishing can't possibly be a bad thing right!?
So, even though we at times were a bit frustrated with the big pikes that didn't bite our lures - we had a great time! Can't wait for next year's NGGF! We'll be back - with bad intentions!
Here are pictures of the pikes we caught:
Here are some links to various information about the event:
