Char eldorado!

Yesterday:
We gave the salmon another shot out of Hästholmen, to catch some fish bigger than we did last week. This was not going to be too difficult, eh?
We met a lot of other anglers trying to catch the same salmon that we were after. Lot of locomotion and activity in the harbour which was fun to see. I was expecting lot of fish reported on the lake to be heard on the VHF, but that just didn't happened this day. Some smaller salmon were caught, but as it looked and the little we heard people from people on the radio, they caught mainly char. Just as we did!
We fished off a lot of spots in our search for the salmon but kept running into schools of char. When we changed to bigger baits some bigger char started to strike, but the main size on the fish were between 50-55cm. We released most of them outside the boat, but some were damaged in their gills so they will be at the christmastable. But we caught some really nice fish this trip too: one really fine char, that had little more fat to be put on the body and when that happens it will be a  fish in 3-4kg size. That fish was released too, off course. The second fish was an incredibly nice looking trout. That fish bit one of Berts flies which was a start of a new flytying era for him ;-)
The fish was released outside the boat as usually. Some fish we just had to net so we could get out the hook with plyers. I practised something i have seen on TV sometimes, when they take out the hooks on fishes: i keep the fish up and down. The fish will be a lot more still then and it will end up in the water faster which increases their chances to survive. The char has had some good years to reproduce, there is a lot of them now, but they are a rare specie of fish,  still well worth to protect. Bring home some to eat, but be careful about the one ment to set free.
Bo Pedersen, Team Tortuga from Motala is a good fellow fisherman: Yesterday morning before we even had got out of the harbour he had caught his first salmon. During the day he caught some more of them and a nice trout. He released them all even though the fish weighed 4-5kg...Reason for that he said, was that they were ment for someone else to catch and he had enough fish in the freezer from his fishing earlier this year in south Sweden.
I will still try to get a nice salmon, so i will turn up in north Lake Vättern as soon as possible. There are a lot of spots to go thrue this winter. I don't understand the meaning with blogging from the lake, even though it seems to be fun. Now some people have found out how to get the GPS-info from photos taken on a good fishingspot, and use them instead of looking for their own little secret spots to fish at. What is there to say about this? One of the answers might be that it will extremely crowded at a few good fishingspots. The rest is left for people like me, without blogphones on the lake. Halleluja fishermen, let's go none tecnofishing, fish only with baitfish and hairy flies. See you at the lake!

Nice char.

In my Warrior going southwest.

No hightech, eh?...well, well. At least no blogphone saying where
I get the fish, but from the GPS screen you can tell i have
caught some fish outside of Omberg.

Hästholmen

Fishing yesterday out of Hästholmen wasn't really in my plans since i fished several days last week in lakes Vänern and Vättern. A late phone call from Bert on saturday evening, with promising winds and somewhat  good reports of fish caught from Hästholmen, made me think otherwise. So we went there sunday morning. Weather was a bit chilly and wind as usually more than weatherforecast said. We choosed to fish south from Hästholmen. Could have gone north as well.
We had a good day on the lake: First of all everything worked really well. All electronics and engine did what they was supposed to. Didn't miss a beat! Bert has been fishing mullet for months and after some refreshing gymnastic exersice on a bumpy lake in a small boat he was soon back in business.
We used all types of tackle during the day and we had fish stricking all of them. We used baitfish on
Vuoksiraksi Vr 2, Salsa, Anchovy special. Flies specialmade in Finland, Apex, Strike-pro, Prehistoric Stive behind an even older hammered flasher. Some fish bit baitfish behind an Actiondisc. We had about 15 contacts. Not all of them came to the net, but were released outside the boat nicely and gently. All fish was taken on the surface or shallower then 30 feet.
No idea how many strikes we had during the day. Probably to many, since we went out of the areas with smaller fish as soon as we entered them, but it was too late when we had double strikes. It's not a good idea to hook so many small fish for catching three or four fish in legal sizes, is my opinion. But the fish we kept was really fine. A couple of char and a 70cm salmon was brought home to the coming christmastable.  Next time i go for the big salmon, probably coming weekend if winds are ok.

Bert with salmon from Hästholmen. Caught with a flie!

Warrior heading for Omberg.

That was about time!

I have been fishing three days this week. First day in Vättern on monday which was a good start on the season. I saw and photographed some spawning chars in the harbour in Huskvarna. Just fantastic to see this show on first row and even take some descent photos with my little pocketcamera. After the show i went fishing: fished off some spots outside Liakanten and Äppelodligen and managed to hook a fair char to take home for the x-mas table. You never know what happens in a few weeks, so better bring home a fish when i got it. I also discovered some electronic faults on the boat, so there were some things that had to be fixed before it gets really cold.
On thursday i went fishing with Robban Qvist, fiskepånätet.se in the water out of Åmål. We tried to fish the Bassängen(bathtub). The location was new to me, but Robban has been there before. We had some, i think four, really fine fish biting our lures during the day, but for some strange reason they were not hooked properly,  even though we fished in speeds around three knots. Finally, in the evening, we had a nice  salmon taking one of our baits, well hooked, all the way to the net. Fish weighed 7.1kg.
On friday we were joined by Ludde from teamlundbergsvahn.blogspot.com and we had a nice day on the lake. We fished in the Tössewaters, also new for me. The weather was fine but the wind could have been less strong. We had constant wind somewhere between 9-11m/sek during the day but managed to hook some really goodlooking trouts weighing 3 and 6.7kg. Both days we fished in pair with Håkan and Erik from Alingsås. They did well both days catching nice fish. It's a good idea to fish in pair helping each other to locate fish and also handy to have an helping hand near is something goes wrong.
I had some trout and salmon with me back home and best of all; it was fun to fish from a boat again :-)
Very good days in good company, nice places and fine fishes.

Spawning char in the Huskvarna harbour. The female is smaller
and darker. Hard to see on the photo.

Not so big but a very nice fish. 

Salmon from Vänern. 7,1kg.

Robban with a nice trout weighing 6,7kg.

Håkan and Erik battling a nice salmon in rough Tössewater.

Brown trout, summer 2011

This browntrout i caught this summer. It's one of the fishes that has been a longgoing dream to get on a hook for me. As long as i have been able to fish i wanted to catch a fish like this and for the last 4-5 years i have every summer been back to a special little creek in northern Finland. I found out that this water cept a few very good looking trouts so i have tried to get one on the hook from this creek the last few years. I have always seen one, had them on the hook for a second or as last year i got one trout but it was a small one comparing to the one i got this summer.
When i came to the little creek i knew i get only one or two throws with my meppsspinner, then the fish will spook and i have to come back another time. So, at my location, just in the bend in the end of little bit more current water i threw my spinner upstream, maybe ten meters. It was just one meter broad where i had to place the spinner, so it had to be perfect right away. A second throw on this spot would not work. I knew this place was the feedingtable for some of the bigger trouts. I had already went thrue some of the other places and have had no contact with fish elsewhere, so the pulse was quite high when i saw the spinner, almost in slowmotion, hit the exact right place, where i wanted it to be. After just two rews on the reel i had a hell of a strike on the spinner and the show was on. The fish had the whole little pool to mess around in and it did. Sharp rocks, weed and treeroots were all possible places where to loose the fish. But this was my day. The trout was hooked well and easy to release from the spinner after the battle that took some five minutes. As usually i took the fish as hard as i could, not meaning ripping it out of the water. I knew that fish will be released so i kept it in the water all the time and even in the photographingmoment i kept it in the water. It was some 44-47cm long, fat and generally very healthylooking fish. It was released with not a single mark on the body and after a little rest it dissapeared in the deeper water in the pool. I saw a glimpse of it later when it had placed itself in the most current place in the creek. It's there now, to live and breed. This was for me a perfect catch. There is many, many more creeks that just waits to get explored, so i have several locations to aim for in the next hundred years i intend to live:-). It will be a lot easier to acess these kind waters on a horse and that is a part of a new project i'm up to now.