The tournament: rules

Although the main purpose was to fish and have a lot of fun, meeting other pike-anglers and sharing knowledge or maybe discuss interesting matters, of course there was indeed a competitive element and that just added up big time to the fun of going to Finland.

The first evening we had a meeting in the conference room of the Eumer Fishing Center. The organizer, Simon Graham, welcomed us all and explained the different aspects of the tournament. As there should be so many fish around, the basic would be to have a maximum of 5 entries per team member per day. Fish should be measured and released after measuring. A picture of the fish was needed to verify and there should be no blood (to ensure the fish is unharmed) on the picture. All streamers should be barbless.


Mike Green from England letting one go during the pre-tournament meeting, in an attempt to eliminate one of the members of The Dutch Four (Erik, in this case).

Fishing would be from a boat, local men would be our guides and we would be going on their boats. As there was huge difference in boats it would be ideal to swap boats each day and as the guides are monolingual Finnish we got a map of the area to point out where we’d like to go. Making an X with your arms would mean stop the boat. The old arms and feet communication, that just made an extra addition to the competition ;-)


Simon gives a rough description of the battlefields for tomorrow.

Then the team discussions came up. As the Finnish were just with 2 guys and the Canadians too, we came up with a way to make the competition better and above all more fair. I would not like to send them back home crying with the lame excuse that the Dutch were four and the English also had four members, just like the Russians (who were still on their way and maybe stuck at the border with a bottle of vodka?). Also most people agreed that neither Finnada ot Canaland sounds like a true team, so combining those teams was not an option. The true spirit of fly-fishing came alive and we decided unanimously that it would ad more fun to the Tournament to go with teams of two instead of four. That meant the Dutch would now have a team 1 and team 2, and so would the English.

Winners: There would be three different competitions.
1. The Biggest Pike. The competitor with the biggest pike caught during tournament days would win the grand prize of a holiday in Kvarken. All supplied by Simon Graham’s Baltic Pike Tours.
2. Most length. The team with the most centimeters recorded (remember, 5 pike over 70cm per person per day) would win First prize.
3. Smallest pike. The tiniest pike would win a small prize as well.

So after the practice day we already reported about, it was time for the first tournament day. Stay tuned to find out out how we went along at the first of three fierce competition days.