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!

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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!

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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/

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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!

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My first 10+ pike!!!

I went out this morning to fish some pike. I started off with some shallow trolling and did that for a while. Didn't catch anything - as expected really.

The water level in the river has went down drastically the last couple of days - especially during last night. It's almost down to the lowest level actually.

I went to a well known spot - it's known to hold big pike, but I have never had any luck there... until today! I put on a Savage Gear rubber shad (brown trout pattern). A couple of casts and something hit the lure. I was concentrated and sat the hook. At first I thought that this must be an OK fish. I was thinking maybe a 4-6 kg fish. But all of a sudden it took off on a hard run. Wow, this is something really big! After a couple of minutes I manged to pull it in far enough to see it. Holy shit! It was massive! I instantly knew that this is a PB for me! The fish did 4-5 long and hard runs and it took me about 10 minutes to net the old lady!

The problem with catching fish like this when you're alone in the boat, is taking pictures. It's friggin' hard! And the display on iPhones really suck out in bright light. I couldn't see the display and hence I couldn't see if I was getting good pictures... and I didn't. Not super bad, but they could have been a lot better.

I got the fish measured and weighed and by golly, new PB - with good margin. My biggest fish was up to this point 9060 grams and 106 cm.
This sucker was 10780 grams and 123 cm long! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

I got the fish back in the water and it took a while to get her swimming again. Man, what a wonderful feeling to see such a big fish swim back into the deep!
But, it doesn't end here! I turned the boat back to fish the same spot some more and I noticed something on the surface. It was my fish - floating up-side-down! Nooooo! I got a hold to try to save her from dying. It took me about 10-15 minutes, but finally she swam down to the bottom (it was really shallow there). She sat on the bottom for a while - which was a good sign - she wasn't turning up-side-down again. Finally, she took off and made the water murky from the sand/mud bottom! Happy times!

Still not finished...

I started fishing the same spot again. First cast and another huge fish attacked my lure again! It was about the same size as the first one and hit real close to the boat. A couple of headshakes and she was gone! I got a good look at her though - she looked more like a muskie than a pike. Real dark gray and the markings on her were pretty 'weak'. Anyways, I couldn't believe it. Two pikes around the same size on the same spot! And I lost one of them!!!! Argh!

A couple of more casts and WHAM! Again!!!! Different fish again, and again around the same size!!! What??!!?? She came off also I'm afraid! God damn motherf****!!!!

But you know what - I'm not allowed to be mad. I got my 10+ kg fish today and I couldn't be happier!

Go Team Riverpigs!

PS. We should have caught this fish last weekend! It would have been the winner fish - by far!

PSS. I wish I had gotten better pictures, but there's nothing I can do about that now.

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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

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Team Riverpigs are on YouTube!

For my birthday this year (which is on the 6th of May) I wanted a GoPro camera. And since my wife is the bestest wife in the world and my parents agreed to give me money, I got what I wanted. I got myself a GoPro Hero 3. I know, not the newest one, but it fit the "budget" fairly well and I think it'll serve my purposes just fine. So, the sole purpose of this camera is to make fishing videos. I have always immensely enjoyed watching fishing videos on YouTube or whatever. I love watching other people fish, talk about fishing, seeing them catch fish and so on. So of course, Team Riverpigs need to make their own. Maybe somebody will enjoy our videos too and heck, maybe even be inspired by them. The world is a strange place and bigger miracles have happened I guess. Anyways, as we speak, we have only produced one video. It's on our YouTube channel which can be found here: We'll be filming when we attend a local pike fishing competition next weekend, so watch out for a new video!

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Team Riverpigs go international

So, this blog has been, from day one, in Norwegian. It was the most natural choice since both me and Ali are both Norwegian (though, Ali was born and lived the first years of his life in Somalia). However, since I have American family (my wife is American) and the thought that maybe others than Scandinavians might find this blog, I decided to change the language to English. Future posts will be in English and if I feel like it, I might translate, at least some, old posts to English as well. So, enjoy and don't get hooked up (pun intended) on bad grammar ok? PS. In Norway (and maybe Sweden and Denmark) we always say "Skitt fiske" to someone who are going out fishing. It's considered bad luck to say "Good luck" to a fisherman, so instead - "Skitt fiske". It might sound strange, and it truly is weird, but it translates to "shit fishing". Therefore I hereby introduce and will be using shit fish as a phrase here on this blog! Shit fish!

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Team Riverpigs will compete in Nedre Glomma Gjeddefestival

Team Riverpigs aim high this year and will compete in two competitions. The first one is Aremark Gjeddeklubb Gjeddekonkurranse in June and the other is Nedre Glomma Gjeddefestival in August.

We competed in NGGF last year also (for the first time), then under the name Team DCZ. The team is still the same, but with a new name.

We obviously are very exited and hope for a little better luck this year. Helge will be hunting for the big lady that he lost last year :).

Shit fish!

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Report from our first pass this season

This season's first pike pass on Glomma is done. The weather forecast was spot on, lots of rain. It was pretty cold and it rained on us pretty much the whole time. Luckily it didn't poor down and most importantly - there was hardly any wind. We can live with that!

We were on the water about 10:30 and the plan was to fish until about 17:00 (Helge was going to a party that night). It never got that late since our fingers got too cold. But, we did get a few hours in.

We started with some trolling along an edge where the depth varied between 4 and 10 meters. We saw lots of fish on the sonar, but they just didn't want to take our baits.

After a while we decided to visit a very familiar spot and do some spin fishing with tail baits and jerkbaits. It didn't take long before we got a small one (about 2 kilos). It took on Svartzonker McMio. I had contact with another small one, but it didn't hit the bait right.

We drifted out into the current and along the rocky shore I had a good contact with a better fish. It scared the living shitters our of me, as it attacked my lure right by the boat. Didn't see that coming (I never do). I wasn't fast enough and didn't get to set the hook and it got away.

We trolled quite a bit more up the river without success. Again, we saw lots of fish on the sonar, but that doesn't really help does it, when they don't want to eat. We went down stream again and back to the spot where I lost the better fish. First cast and BANG! This time I was ready and hooked the lady. I got a nice jump and a few cool headshakes before Ali netted her and we got her in the boat. I struggled a bit with the unhooking so I didn't want to measure and weigh her. I'm pretty confident that she was about 6 kilos. A nice release followed and she was back in the water.

That was it, no more fish that day. We saw lots of fish on the sonar on the way home too, but no hits.

Absolutely great to have done our fish pass for the season and happy that we caught a decent fish. The weather could have been a bit more comfortable, but hey - we're not complaining!

Cheers!

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