Ny motor - og gjeddene var sultne!

Jeg fikk båten min levert tilbake på mandag, med en splitter ny Yamaha F30 ferdig montert på. Dette har jeg gledet meg skikkelig til. Ikke noe mer senestrekk, ømme muskler og banning pga startsnor!

Det ble selvfølgelig en tur på elva mandag kveld. Både for å teste ut motoren og leke litt med den, men også selvfølgelig for å fiske litt gjedde. Vannstanden i Glomma har gått litt ned i det siste og vannet har blitt forholdsvis klart. Det er faktisk ganske bra sikt. Og så viste det seg å ikke være mer enn 12 grader i vannet også - litt overraskende egentlig. Det har vært sinnsykt varmt i det siste.

Det tok ikke mange kastene på et kjent sted - forholdsvis stort område som er grunt, inn mot lekeviker og med en fin drop på utsiden. Jeg la meg på ca 2,5 meter og begynte denge. Det var i første omgang Savage Gear 3D Hybrid Pike som fikk lov å prøve seg. Et bete jeg har fisket tilnærmet ingenting med tidligere og dermed ei heller fått noe på det. Men, det tok ikke mange kasta før det smalt til noe jævlig. Jävlar, för ett hugg! Dette var en meget sulten og sinna fisk! Etter å ha landet fisken i håven klødde jeg meg litt i hodet, fordi Hybrid Pike-en var borte! Vel, den var jo ikke det, men den var pakket fint sammen langt nede i gjeddegapet! Heldigvis satt ikke krokene slik at gjedda ble skadet og fisken svømte pent videre etter å ha blitt veid, målt og fotografert.

3720g - 82cm

Etterhvert fant jeg ut at det store vinnerbaitet fra i fjor vår - McPike 18cm rød/svart - måtte få prøve seg også. Det smalt til relativt kjapt her også. Nok et sinnsykt hugg og jeg trodde det var en litt bedre fisk. Det viste seg å være en liten jævel på rundt en kilo (!!) som hadde superpike-krefter. Artig når det blir en tøff fight på en så liten fisk 😀.

Jeg gjorde et nytt pass over samme område som jeg startet på - en siste gang før jeg tok kvelden. Nå var det en Pig Shad Jr #108 som fikk prøvd seg. Og jammen smalt det ikke til igjen! Enda mer brutalt hugg  var det også! Og for noen utrusninger jeg fikk!! Skulle tro det var en 10+ gjedde dette. Viste seg å være ca samme vekt som den første faktisk. Men dæven for en fight! Ufattelig gøy!
Også denne hadde svelget baitet fullstendig, men heldigvis ingen større skade skjedd. Svømte pent tilbake igjen etter veiing, måling og foto.

3440g - 80cm

Mer ble det ikke denne gangen. Men når gjeddene hugger og fighter slik de gjorde i dag, så spiller det ikke noen rolle at det ikke var så mange av de.

Kan forøvrig legge til at jeg var ute et par timer i går kveld (onsdag). Det ble fullstendig bomtur. Ingen hugg, ingen fisk å se.

Gleder meg til fortsettelsen av denne sesongen. Jeg er storfornøyd med motoren og gleder meg til å bruke den under konkurranser. Blir så deilig å slippe å fyke bak i båten og dra armene ut av ledd hele tiden. Litt under ei uke igjen nå, til konkurranse i regi av Aremark Gjeddeklubb.

Skitt fiske!

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A great day of pike fishing!

Last Sunday (2.October 2016) me and my friend Dag Ronny Hansen had our annual fall pike pass. It was supposed to be the weekend after, but because of some double booking we had to change the date.

This is the fourth year in a row me and Dag have fished for pike in the fall together, and we have stamped this event as a tradition now. I obviously always love going pike fishing, but I have to, with hand over heart, say that I really enjoy fishing with Dag. He is a good angler, he knows a lot of good spots and he is a really great guy!

So, the big question before this trip was where to fish? The previous years we have fished 3 different waters - Isesjø (a lake), Glomma (river) and Vestvannet/Mingevannet (lakes, sort of. Extensions of the river Glomma). Since the water was low and really clear in Glomma, we decided to give that a go again. We didn't have much luck there last time, but maybe it would be better this time? Another reason we went with Glomma was that I have my boat on Glomma already. We could just load the boat and be on our way.

We got out of bed at 05:20 (don't you be thinking dirty now! We live in separate houses!) and around 06:00 we were loading the boat with all our gear. The boat was pretty full! Rods, C&R gear, bait boxes ++++. When we were ready and were on open water it was still dark so we drove slowly and used some time to rig our gear.

We had sort of a plan on where to fish during the day. We both know about a few good spots and Dag knew about a few spots that I either never had fished or never had any luck fishing. Our first stop was at the spot where I caught my 10+ in June. I'm not quite sure, but I think I caught one pike there. Like the majority of the pikes we caught this day, it wasn't very big. I would guess around 2 kg.

We headed further north - beyond where I usually fish - to an area with lots of current. This area is told to hold huge pikes. Of course, as with all huge pikes, they are really hard to catch and that also turned out to be true even for the small pikes. We got skunked in this area. At this time of the day it was pretty cold and not very pleasant out. It was cloudy and we had a chilly wind coming in from the north so we could have been more comfortable. Our hands were cold and we realized that we might be under-dressed. Lucky for us this changed later in the day though.

Ok, so our plan was to work our way south on the river from this area. First we moved to a shallow area surrounding a couple of small islands. About 1-1,5 meter of depth and scattered weed beds - and pikes! I don't remember exactly, but I think we landed about 4 pikes there. One which was following my lures a few times before it hit Dag's bait. It was a decent fish but we suspect is was sick. It had a huge head, but it was really skinny. The pikes shouldn't be skinny at this time of year. We had to put it out it's misery though, because it had swallowed the bait completely and messed up it's gills.

The next few hours we fished close to shore, right outside the weeds by the drop offs. We switched between casting rubber baits, jerk baits and poppers so far. I would say that all baits produced equally good. After fishing this stretch for a few hours, we decided to break for lunch. We stopped at a nice place facing the sun and started a fire. The plan was to grill some hot dogs. Sitting down in front of the fire, starting to dig through my food sack, I realized that I had forgotten my friggin' hot dogs in the fridge!! Motherfu**er! The night before I was so focused on the two things I had to remember to grab in the morning - a flash light and those damn hot dogs. Dag was kind enough to share one of his delicious chilly hot dogs and a few of his chicken wings with me (I didn't need any more actually). Thanks Dag! You're a great fishing buddy! I owe you one!

After this gourmet lunch we decided to do some trolling in spots we know hold good fish. This resulted in two nice pikes pretty much on the same spot.





































From here on we pretty much did trolling the rest of the day. Dag wanted to fish a stretch not far from my house and I wasn't hard to convince, since this is where I have caught my 2. and 3. largest pikes. This stretch is perfect for large pikes. It's really shallow before it drops fast down to 2-6 meters. There's also a lot of weeds all the way to the edge. Dag ended up catching 3 pikes on this stretch. His newly bought Strike Pro Giant was hot towards the end of the day. It's worth mentioning that one of these 3 pikes gave a really, really good fight. We really thought it was a humongous beast, but wasn't really that big. The weird thing is that the fish got caught on the bottom to something. It got loose, but had some really bad wounds on both sides. We decided to keep the fish because the wounds were pretty bad and the fish would probably not make it anyways.

At this time of year it gets dark really fast, so we decided to head home before it got pitch black. Dag needed to clean and fillet the three fish he kept and obviously that's a job that's a bit easier when there's some light out.
The cleaning process ended up being pretty nasty actually. I'm not sure how it happened, but he was done cleaning the fish and was washing off the board he used to clean the fish and managed to cut his finger pretty bad. It was a pretty deep cut and there was a lot of blood. We taped it up as good as possible, but Dag was wondering if he maybe would need some stitches. He ended up not stitching it that same night, but did it the day after - since the cut kept opening up all the time. Not the best ending to a really good day :(.

To sum up the day:
We ended up having a pretty good fishing day. 18 pikes landed where the biggest were 4 kg, 4.5 kg and 6.8 kg. I guess I should mention that it was Dag who caught the biggest pikes. He claims it was beginners luck since he hadn't fished in a long time. I call that being modest :).
The weather was good (at least most of the day), fishing was good, Dag is a great fishing buddy... so yeah, a very successful day. It's worth mentioning that the most fish we've caught on our previous trips is 5 pikes (last year).

We're already looking forward to this trip next year!

PS. I had a plan to take a lot of pictures and video with my GoPro. Well, that didn't work out too good. I do have some video and I will probably get that uploaded and included in this post pretty soon.

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