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.

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:

• http://www.storgjedda.com/nedre-glomma-gjeddefestival-2016-resultater-og-oppsummering/
• https://tv.nrk.no/serie/distriktsnyheter-oestfold/DKOS99082616/26-08-2016#t=5m45s
• https://www.sarpsborg24.no/jon-borgaas-arets-gjeddekonge/

Read More

Favorite bait type

When my interest for pike fishing re-ignited some years ago, it was mainly due to the amazing movie "Gäddfeber" from Sweden, featuring Stefan "Trumman" Trumstedt and Torbjörn "Buster" Odén. These two guys had a once in a life time fishing experience, catching numerous 10+ pikes. As far as I know, they mainly used Buster Jerk baits.

I got hooked on jerk bait fishing (or glider baits as they're called in the US) and this has been my favorite fishing method for pike... maybe until now.

The last few years, spin fishing with rubber baits/shads/jigs has become seriously popular. Jerk bait is still popular, but not like, say, 10 years ago.

 I bought some shads a couple of years ago, but I had much more confidence in jerk baits - and hence I mainly fished jerk baits. However, this changed a bit this summer. I was lucky and found the right spot at the right time. The spot I'm talking about is in a small area which is well known by locals to hold big pike. I haven't had any luck what so ever in this area though. Anyway, this summer all this changed. By chance I was trying some shads in this area.

The bottom structure and depths there are pretty weird actually. It's in a small bay. The depths here are everywhere from 0.5 meters to 20 meters in a pretty small area. In the area where it's a bit deeper, there are also big variations. One spot holds 2 meters of water while if you turn around in the boat and cast 2-3 meters back, you have 7 meters of water. Right in the middle of all this there is a small hole in the structure, which holds about 2 meters of water. This hole is where things happened for me this summer. I caught my first 10+ pike there and I lost 3-4 more possibly 10+ fish there in just a couple of days. The thing was that the water level had dropped about 0.5 to 1 meter the night before, but was still not at the summer lowest. Also, the air temperature had just started rising quite a bit, so there were lots of important changes going on at the same time. Now when the water is at the lowest, this spot has produced nothing what so ever. It was just a 2-3 day window where it was hot.

Anyway, the point is that the fish I caught (and lost) hit on rubber shads. I tried jerk baits among a lot of different types of lures over the same spot, but it turned out that it was the rubber shads that did the trick. Why? I have no idea. It was not the size that tipped the scale, because some of the other baits I tried where approximately the same size (around 15cm). After this I have a new found love for rubber shads. I have invested in some new ones (Pig Shad among other things) and had pretty good success with that.

Don't get me wrong though. I haven't excluded other types of baits. I still fish a lot of jerk baits and I love it as much as before - but I would rather see it like this: I have broadened my fishing. I have more strings to play on, so to speak. But at the moment, I must say that jerk bait and rubber shads are my favorite baits to fish for pike. There's nothing like the feeling of a big hit while spin fishing!

When we (Team Riverpigs) fish competitions, we troll a lot. Mainly because we usually then fish waters that we aren't too familiar with and hence don't know the best spots. Therefore our strategy is to cover as much water as possible - hoping this will increase our changes of catching bigger fish. We are fishing Nedre Glomma Gjeddefestival 2016 in a couple of weeks, and this being our second year, we have gained knowledge of a couple of good spots where we'll try some spin fishing. Crossing our fingers!

Cheers, and good luck with those monster pike!

Read More

Report from C&R pike competition

Ok, so we participated in Aremark Gjeddeklubb's C&R Pike Competition in Aspern and Ara near Halden this last weekend. Me and Ali headed out on Friday night and spent the night there (the competition started on Saturday morning). Why? Because the registration started fairly early Saturday morning and we wanted to avoid having to get up super early on Saturday to make the fairly long drive.

Our tents are up and ready

We got the boat on the water when we arrived and got the tent set up. We hung out for a while, talking to some of the other contestants (a majority of them had also showed up on Friday) before we decided to hit the sack.

Good night!

We didn't get much sleep that night. Hard and uneven ground plus some party-happy fishermen in the big tent right next to us contributed to that. Didn't matter though, we were up and running by 08:00 on Saturday.

Parking lot

Ali getting his rod ready ;)

We loaded the boat with all the fishing gear, food and other stuff and got registered. We got our catch form along with number tags for the fish and a measure board. Good to go!

We went out on the water about 09:30 and just hung around out there until 10:00 when the fishing could start.

Hanging around on the water waiting for the start time

We didn't really have a solid plan for how we would do our fishing, other than to do trolling for the most part - and stop for some spinfishing/jerkbaitfishing once in a while.
We had never been to this lake before - and other than studying a map of the lake and getting some tips from friends here and there, we didn't really know much about it. So, we tried staying close to shore as much as possible and just keep an eye on the sonar for edges.

The first part of the day Saturday was pretty decent for us. We caught 5 fish (I think) - where on of them was decent size. 85cm isn't really that bad. The rest though, were really small. 4 of the 5 were caught on trolling, while the last one was caught in a shallow bay while spinfishing.
Ali's new Swim Whizz Helin Frog was the hottest bait Saturday. It caught 3 fish I believe.

We fished the full day - until 21:00 when everybody had to quit fishing. Talking to some of the other guys it sounded like we had done fairly well with out 85cm fish. However, when we later talked to some more people, it turned out that we would need 3-4 more fish that size or bigger to have any chance what so ever. Oh well, it's not about winning...

We went to bed around 23:30 that night - after grilling (and eating) some hot dogs. We both slept really well actually.

The fishing could start at 06:00 on Sunday and sure enough - Team Riverpigs were up at 05:20 to get ready.

Ali digging in his tent at 05:30 in the morning

Sunday turned out to be really slow for us (and most of the others too). We caught 2 fish and they were really small. We needed some more and in bigger sizes! We saw lots of fish on the sonar (both Saturday and Sunday) but they weren't especially interested in our baits. We did the same thing as on the day before. Mostly trolling, but stopped for some spinning once in a while.

The fishing ended at 14:00 and we went in to give our report. 345cm for our 5 biggest fish. It obviously didn't give us any prizes, but in the end we ended up on a OK 14th place (shared that spot with another team). Not too bad I guess. 14th out of 37.

All in all the weekend was near perfect. Even though we didn't do super well fishing, a weekend of pure fishing, nice weather, nice company, nice camp ground, super nature and being part of such an event (it's fun when so many people with the same burning passion for pike fishing gather like this) - is so much fun!

Now we're looking forward to the next competition, which is Nedre Glomma Gjeddefestival in August. We attended this last year also, and since that event takes place on my "home river" Glomma, we hope to do even better this time. We now know the area better and we have equipped the boat so we can fish 5 rods at the same time, rather than 2 last year. It obviously gives us a better change of catching more fish.

The view from our tents

Saturday night dinner

Read More