Piking In The Baltic Sea

Well, for a few hours anyway. In Finland with customers who wanted to visit our factory.

"Do you want a traditional Finnish sauna, sitting around in the nude with blokes you don't know, then jump into an ice cold lake or do you want to go pike fishing on a state of the art boat with ice cold beers in the cooler ? " I said. A slightly loaded question perhaps, but they made the correct decision.

They'd never fished before, so I left the skipper to sort them out whilst I got down to fishing ( you've got to be ruthless ). It was warm, sunny, great scenery and it certainly beat proper work. Ended up with a couple of jack pike and a decent perch.There are worse ways of spending an afternoon.

Finished the day on the 18 th floor of a Helsinki hotel drinking cocktails. All in the name of improving customer relations. The sacrifices I make for the sake of the company, eh ?

Estuary Lure Fishing

We like making things difficult for ourselves, don't we ? I know that I could go down to the Stour,Colne or Blackwater estuary with a few ragworm and my floatfishing gear and catch several bass on a half reasonable tide.

To make things more challanging I've been trying to catch them on lures. Which wouldn't be particularly difficult in some other parts of the country where the water is generally clearer, but so far I've struggled around here (struggled = failed).

Lovely evening last night though, T shirt and shorts weather until 10 in the evening. Not a touch though.

I'll have one soon.

Glorious Devon

Just back from a fantastic family holiday in Devon, where the sun shone every day for a week. You won't get anywhere better in the world when you're fortunate enough to have that kind of weather.

I managed to get out fishing most mornings and evenings for an hour or two, armed with a little spinning rod and a few lures. I fished several different rock marks, all within five minutes of the cottage and each trip yielded wrasse and pollack, with lots of missed takes. Over the course of the week I had 35-40 fish, with the three best wrasse going over 4lb, plus a few nice pollack.

 On the second morning I fished I had six takes in the first six casts, four of which resulted in fish, the biggest being a wrasse of 4lb 6oz.

All the fish came on 3 or 4 inch stick baits, hooked Texas style, twitched across the bottom. The most difficult thing was hitting the bites, with probably 60 to 80% being missed. Plenty of cursing and jumping up and down in frustration ensued !

The water was incredibly clear, especially to someone used to the murky North Sea. How I wish we had fishing like that round here.

Sitting on the rocks in shorts and T shirt, warm sun on my back, catching plenty fish on light gear, not a soul in sight. Unbeatable. Catching whiting whilst freezing your nuts off in November doesn't really compare !

Can't wait to get back there as soon as possible.