Fishing for pleasure, the post-tournament-syndrome.

It was funny to see the end of the tournament did not mean all of us getting wasted and not thinking about the fishing anymore. Hell no, that very last day of the tournament the weather was nice and our learning curve kept growing. Even though some places would look similar, there were some differences. The pike were everywhere, that’s one thing we knew for sure. But you just had to get into an area where they were feeding.

And of course our new rigs gave us more confidence, just like discovering a huge difference in the boat between Hajee’s small unweighted EP-fiber streamer and my big zonker/bucktail double-deckers. It was amazing to see the difference in numbers of fish that took small streamers vs. big ones. We felt more comfortable hauling heavy weight rods by the day. The Echo SW turned out to be superb for some accurate presentations, where myself I fell in love with the action of the TFO TiCrX. That rod has a nice action, well spread over the entire blank and able to pull out streamers at 20-30 feet of the boat to just get them back to the edge of the reeds in one or two false casts.

So after the ceremony I asked Jaakko some materials and he took me into the shop to let me pick out whatever I thought I needed. Not much, simple yellow and white deceivers of about 10-15 centimeters were what I had in mind. So I tied two of those for the next day.




That next day was sweet. As I was a bit frustrated about not having the right streamer the day before we decided we’d go out and try to have as much fun as possible. Just practicing the casts, going to some new area’s we did not see yet and really enjoy the scenery. As we were right in the middle of a high pressure zone the wind was a bit shifty, and we got a new boat with a new guide. Our guide was the little brother of Jaakko and Olli. It was just pure enjoyment to get onto a boat with this young lad, who was interested in all our flies and stuff.


The young fellow liked to cruise around full trottle


with some handsignals we let him approach the hot area's a bit slower

So Hajee and me had a lot of fun, we saw so many pike just lying on the bottom, already finished with spawning, but yet not hungry or active enough to nail down our streamers. We practiced casts and pushpoled each other around through new bays. The casting was a good thing to do as well and Hajee tried to capture some nice shots of the TiCrX in full casting action.


TiCrX in fully loaded action


Hajee tried to make some pics from a different angle


What of course, to our rules ended up in a big mess!

We caught some fish, but in the meanwhile, a few miles away the other two Dutchmen had a blast.
Erik and Harmen-Jan found a spot where the spawning was definitely done. The fish were active as piranha’s and when they came back to the docks they were totally thrilled. Double hook-ups, nice sized fish, they saw it all.

Underneath an intermezzo that just got in from Eriks hand, explaining how they felt at that moment:
The jackpot

The Merikarviadelta is not as big as the Kvarken region where the tournament would have taken place if not for the ice. But still it’s a couple of square kilometres of water, islets, rocks and trees. So after we finished the tournament there were still some parts that we hadn’t visited yet, let alone fished in. It was in one of those remote corners that we (Harmen-Jan and Erik in this case) hit the jackpot.
We had a good boat that day, which didn’t need much depth, and an oarsman who knew his job rather well. The place we went was basically a straight “channel”, some two meters deep. We saw a couple a boats trolling with lures, but no action. We even saw two ospreys but they caught no fish either. So at first glance and apart from the beautiful nature it was not very special. On both sides of the channel however there were shallows. Our guide told us that during the summer the water level usually drops and the channel is all that remains until the cycle repeats itself in the fall. Very carefully we entered the shallows on one side of the channel and worked our way across, casting our streamers left and right in every nook and cranny. Not much happened. We spooked a few fish and caught a few small pike, probably males. After some time Harmen-Jan managed to catch a decent 90 cm fish. We felt relieved; at least we hadn’t come all this way for zilch.
We crossed the channel to start fishing the shallows on the other side. Immediately a big swirl showed the place where only seconds before a pike had dashed off. In its wake more pike started moving. “Stop the boat, stop the boat” we simultaneously whispered at our guide in this almost unfriendly tone of voice that leaves no room for discussion. Superfluous words these turned out to be as he had seen what happened also. Even before the boat had come to a full stop two streamers were airborne. They did little more than touch the water when all hell broke loose. Every single cast produced at least a take. It was incredible. And if the pike didn’t get hooked, so what? A few strips later another one would have a go. Under normal conditions we help each other by landing the other guy’s fish; but now there was hardly any room for this kind of friendly assistance. Double hookups can be a pain you know☺. Yeeehah! And when it slowed down, our guide took us just a little further into pike territory and we would brace ourselves for the next vicious slash at our streamers. When we reached the channel again, maybe one hour later, maybe even less, we had hooked, caught and lost god knows how many pike. We gazed at eachother in sheer disbelief. We shook hands and knew that we had just had our finest hour ever. The jackpot. This one will be hard to top!




complete mayheim


Finland in early may, t-shirts and nice releases
Harmen-Jan was trembling and stumbling over his own words… “I made a cast and saw a big bow-wave coming from behind…. There it comes Erik… It is there look! Look! Kaboom! And miss!” He made a cast right back into the zone and as soon as the fly hit the water he had yet another hard strike. The man was obviously stoked and finally they had discovered the pike-walhalla so to say. The last half an hour of their day was just insane.
It is nice to see people so enthusiastic and it really made us all desire even more for the next day of fishing, which would be the last one. The pike seemed to finally get over the procreating modus into a good feeding mode.

Harmen-Jan makes a recast at a miss, while Erik strikes into fish


even on foot they caught several fish

Back at the lodge we had a wonderful time sitting on one of the decks, exchanging the findings of this day, showing each other pictures and rigs and drinking a few good beers. When I walked back from the sauna to the room at about 1.30 I was already mindset for the next session. We’ll come back on that one.