Salmon...what salmon?

Now it's official...I'm a bad fisherman. That's why this blog is called fisher wannabe :)
I'm now back to Oulu and done salmon fly fishing for this summer. This was the fourth summer since I started fly fishing salmon and the first time I didn't catch any of those beautiful and tasty creatures!
I was in Utsjoki for 12 days and fished in 9 of those days for about 40 hours altogether. I fished in Vetsijoki and Utsjoki rivers and the only action was in Utsjoki with a small salmon, tintti, which somehow escaped after a couple of minutes fight.

As any fisherman, good or bad, I can blame some of the bad fishing luck on the conditions. The early part of the first week I was up north there was still some new fish swimming up to Teno river and its tributaries and they were quite active. But towards the end of that week it all basically stopped as the water on Teno river got very high because of the heavy rains espeacially on the upper parts of the river.

The good news is I got much better casting the fly with a shooting head as I dind't loose any good casting time by playing with salmons :)

The Vision's fly fishing jacket I bought this spring was very good and I can honestly recommend it to anybody.

Missing summer ...and fly fishing

I just read my old blog entries from the summer. The one about a dream got me missing summer and fishing...badly.

I hope it's going to be a good salmon summer this year at Teno and it's tributaries. A fellow from Game and Fisheries Research Institute was cautiously expecting that there'd be much more 10 kg salmons next summer compared to last summer...I hope this is true.

Rainbow trout in its' natural environment

I was visiting Yosemite national park last weekend with my family. It's a great place to visit, though now it's been so dry that the Yosemite water falls looked like there's only someone pissing down from the cliffs :)
If you go there I can recommend the Yosemite View Lodge for accomodation although the prices are pretty steep this time of the year.
Up there I learned that the only natural fish in the rivers there is rainbow trout and that also only up to 1200 meters high. We saw one rainbow trout while we were wading in Merced river to refresh. The 30 cm trout slowly swam as close as 2 meters from us. I have to say it was really beautiful, nothing like the fodder fed fat pigs we are growing in some facilities and ponds in Finland and then putting to certain rivers for fishermen's amusement.

It's too bad I didn't have a chance to go fishing in Yosemite. I felt like the Merced river was calling for me to come and fish it. There were so many great looking places for fishing. I definetly have to try fly fishing in California now that I'm staying here for a little bit longer than usually. If anyone has any recommendations for good rivers, good guides, renting equipment etc. within 50 mile range of San Francisco Bay area please let me know. My email is markook73(at)yahoo.com.

Concluding my fishing season so far

I arrived Mountain View, California with my wife and daughter on Saturday and I'll be here for the next 5 weeks. This means that the early part of my fishing season has ended and it's time to wrap up how it has been so far.

Fishing in Utsjoki river was ok although the water was really high the whole time. I gained a lot of experience but managed to catch also something. The best thing is I broke my own fly salmon record, ie. I caught my biggest salmon ever by fly fishing. The record is still not that impressive, about 3.5 kg, but still it's my record.

In the end I managed to go fishing in Vetsijoki river only once although it is my favorite river. I didn't catch anything but instead lost a very good fly as a salmon about the same size as my new record broke the tippet line.

This summer I also went to fish in Vesterelva river in Norway for the first time ever. It is quite a nice salmon river and I'm certainly going to go fish there also in the future. But that has to be after the first week of July as I heard that the salmon really starts to get into that river in big numbers from the second week of July onwards.

Finnish salmon rivers

Man they have a lot of salmon rivers in Norway as in Finland we have only 5 of them (if you don't count the tributary rivers). And actually only 3 of those give enough salmon to really talk about. Those are Teno, Näätämö and Tornionjoki rivers. Simojoki river has been getting better and I think they do catch fair amount of salmon from Kymijoki river also. Kiiminkijoki you can't really call a salmon river, but every year some salmon is caught. Oulujoki river used to be a very good salmon river before they build it for power production during 1940's to 1960's. Now it produces 2700 GWh. A few years back they build fish ladder so salmon can go past the first dam in Oulu. I've read that now there have been some salmon babies swimming in Oulujoki river above the first dam. I truly hope they build the fish ladder also to the next dam above and salmon starts to really come back to this river because I live in Oulu.

Fishing in Vesterelva

I was fishing with my brother in law in Vesterelva in Norway on Friday evening and Saturday. I've heard a lot of good about the river, the river is full of salmon and they bite your bate (actually only fly allowed) more eagerly than in most of the rivers. So our hope were high when we headed there. First negative surprise was the cost of fishing license for Vesterelva. We had to first buy the Norway's national fishing license which was 275 NOK for a year (we were told you can't get the license for a shorter period). And then we bought the 24 hour license for the river which was 300 NOK. So all together we paid 575 NOK each for a day's license...I think it's something like 65 €. I know there are lot more expensive rivers even in Norway, but this is more expensive than for example the licenses for Teno river and I think it's quite a lot for a small river like Vesterelva.

The next disappointment was that we didn't catch anything. It was a new river for both of us, so we didn't know where to focus our fishing efforts. Also we heard from the local fishing guard that there hasn't been a lot of salmon in the river this summer. Also some fishing tourists that had been fishing there for years confirmed this. Maybe it's because the water is very high and cold? Oh well...I'll go there again next summer as the river is anyhow very beautiful and in the end we were shown the places where to focus our fishing to be effective.

Thoughts on C&R fishing

I've been thinking the ideology behind Catch and Release fishing for quite long. Earlier this week I caught a 3.5 kg salmon with fly. It was so beautiful and gave a good fight and then I killed it. Later during the night when I was in the bed trying to sleep I started to think about the fish I had caught and I felt kind of sad for it.
I thought that what if I had released it? But in the end I realized that it doesn't honor the fish, but it's more like teasing and hassling with them for nothing. It's better to fish for food and honor the life of the fish by killing it fast and making sure that the meet doesn't go wasted by taking it to cold pretty fast. And I thank mother nature every time it offers me something.

Don't take this wrong though. I do understand the thinking behind C&R fishing when it is important to make sure the fish population in a certain river f. ex. is not endangered. And I don't condemn people who do C&R also in "normal" river. But you'll never see me doing C&R anywhere. If catch and kill is not permitted in some river, I won't fish there.

Challenges with a shooting head and weather conditions

Last night I finally got to go fly fishing salmon from the river Utsjoki for the first time this summer. It really didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. I had some problems with casting for two reasons, the shooting head that was too long and the wind was absolutely crazy.
I thought that when you buy a a rod, reel and lines with shooting head, the head would be ready for use out of the box. So I just set everything tying the lines together with loops and went fishing. Obviously I was wrong and that became self evident in a few minutes. I realized that my brand new 10 feet AFTM 8 Guideline LPXe rod can't handle 12 meters long shooting head. Immediately I sat down on the beach and went surfing the internet with my Nokia N76 for information on the shooting head lengths and realized I have to cut it 2,5-3 meters shorter. Well, I didn't want to do it then as I didn't have those easily attachable loops for the line end and the problem trying to make those loops yourself was still fresh in my memory.
So I continued fishing although you couldn't talk about casting a fly...it was more like throwing. And I had been told using a shooting head would make fly fishing easier! The wildly blowing wind didn't make it any easier. The wind blew the line to my face a couple of times while I was trying to cast it. I was very lucky not to get the fly to my face!
Did I catch anything besides my jacket? ...No :( As any fisherman I have good excuses. Besides the challenges with casting, the water is now really high. I have never fished on that part of Utsjoki with water being that high. I didn't really know where to look for the fish. And I only had floating line (shooting head). I think I have to get the fly well below the surface in order to catch a salmon in these water conditions. This means I got to get me a intermediate or sinking 2 shooting head...and of course those easy to use loops for it. So I have to go shopping now. In the mean while read the blog by Aslak Pieski, mostly about river Teno and fishing there, from here: http://www.tenojoki.fi/tenopaasivut/aslak/

Trout fishing in fjells

The evening 2 days ago I went to a very small lake in the fjell to fish trout and arctic charr. I was able to catch a few of those, just enough for a lunch for four the next day. Bete Lotto was the best lure, while flys didn't work at all.
Man they taste great and the flesh is so red. I wonder what kind of shrimps they eat. The funny thing is that not all the trouts/arctic charr in the same lake eat the same stuff as sometimes you can catch a fish that has white flesh.

My fishing season soon starting

My fishing fever is getting really bad.
I've been day dreaming about fishing for couple of months already and during the last month I've even seen dreams of fishing many times while sleeping.
The other day I watched two fishing films on DVD. Man I wanna go fishing!
I'm expecting to receive a new set of Fly fishing gear today; rod, reel and lines. I'll write more about those once I've tested them.

Anyway, soon I can kick off my fishing season. Tomorrow morning I'll pack my things into my car and drive up north to Utsjoki (it'll be a long drive, 680 km) where I'm originally from. Then on Saturday, unless I have a really bad hangover, I'm gonna go Salmon fishing to river Utsjoki. During next two weeks I'll spend a lot of time also fishing from river called Vetsijoki.

Ignition...

It's time for me to start the blog finally. I've been thinking about this for way too long. This blog is going to cover mainly my hobbies such as (fly) fishing and snow mobiling.

I've been fishing since I was a 6 year old boy. There was no one really in my family who could have taught me as my dad doesn't really know that much about fishing without nets. So I've had to learn everything by myself...and it has been a very long road. Still today my success as a fisherman isn't that great if you measure it by the number or the size of fish I've caught. But that doesn't affect my love for the sport :)