Last Friday I had the honour to have the Estonian company APL booked for a long day. They were represented by Dimitri, Sergev, Aleksei and “Haukiman”. Jan Aalto from Goodtech joined in in the afternoon. APL have a fishing competition every year for their employees and now they were looking for a new place to come fishing.
The biggest pike they caught in the competition the last 15 years was 7,6kg so we were looking for a big pike to get them convinced. This also ment that we were targeting areas were there is not that many fish but the big fish like it there. In the beginning of the day I told the gang that i lika my guiding to be like a good book. You want to get hooked early to continue reading (fishing) then you need some ups and downs (slow fishing) and in the end you would want and epic ending like a fairytale (Happily ever after with BIG fish).
The fishing started slow and we only had a few small bites the first hour. The first real hookup was a decent 5-kilo (about) that got loose at the boatside. Soon there after Dimitri hooks a 2kg fish and Sergev gets another one at the same time. His was a bit bigger with 3,2kg. We keep on casting like fishing machines and grind to about 12 before we decide to paus for lunch. We go back to shore and I cook a potato hotchpotch on the gas Muurika. We enjoy some time under the roof while the rain starts pouring down, sipping on our coffee and eating cake.
After lunch we make a long move to try some new waters with hopefully more action, Jan enters the boat and land one small pike before we decide to change water all over again. New long move and this time it pays of, the pike is activ and we get lots of strikes and land a bunch of pikes. Now the problem is that they are not big ones… New move and new possibilities, we fish deeper and Dimitri is fishing a small pig shad with a jig head bottombouncing when i has a better strike. I net it quickly and a 4 kilo fish is now the best of the day so far. We keep on hammering, It’s overtime we have been fishing for almost 10 hours and everybody is tired but I’m not the one who gives up 🙂
I fish a small curlytail jig i bright red/orange with a heavy head, slowly combing the bottom when the BIG STRIKE comes. I soon becomes clear it is a bigger fish when you can feel the headshakes. I ask Jan to get the net ready and soon thereafter he nets a beautiful pike. We measure length and weight to 111cm and 8kg (I strongly belive I screwed up the weight because it was so broad over the neck and back that it should have had some more weight (not ten kilo but close to 9 at least). A fantastic pike to end a fantastic day, I would have called it a fairytale ending if only it was any af the guests who had caught it but at least they got to see the amazing quality of fish around 🙂 In total we landed just under 20 pikes during our search for the big one!
Big thanks to you all for a lovely day out on the water!
//Hasse