Viking Lars | Saturday, 14 October 2017
Or - not quite - end of season is what it's really about, and then, not quite that either. Can you tell I haven't been fishing much the last 2-3 weeks? Something strange always happens around October 1st. Three of the salmon rivers in Western Jutland close on October 15th, and I'm always conscious about that around October 1st, thinking that I still have a fortnight to get in a few trips or three.
And then - all of a sudden October 15th is here, and I'm in trouble. But then I remember, my home water, River Varde, is open until October 31st, so I still have a fortnight to get in 2 or 3 trips (see the pattern)!
Season end has been rather wet this year. In fact, I don't think I've seen the rivers so high for so long as I have in the last month or so. It's been raining a lot in Denmark. I don't know how much (it's easy enough to look up on the weather service website, but who cares really), but's it's been raining enough that the rivers have been really high.
I don't mind high water - especialy when it starts to drop, but constant high means parts of the rivers are unfishable for weeks, you're always chucking *really* dense lines to get down, heavy flies and it's all just not as elegant as we prefer it to be.
Not that fishing can't be good - it certainly can, but it's just not for me, that constantly high water. I sincerely hope that maybe, just maybe, the water level in River Varde will drop just a little. Falling water and preferably some fair weather is a good combo for salmon and sea trout in the rivers. If the water drops, I'm sure I'll get in those 2 or 3 trips before the river closes.
I did some prospecting on a pike lake last week since I've heard rumours of really big and fat pike (well, I've seen the pictures too). I've fished this lake before, but I have a totally new perception of it now, after crusing around the lake in my Anderson Pontoon, checking out the lake on my Deeper Sonar.
I chucked some fluff too, of course. I strung up my Torpedo 10-wt with a type 5, 7,5m long sinking shooting head. 24 grams seems pretty spot on for the rod (maybe a tad heavy, but a short, heavy, dense sinker isn't the best way to judge that), but man, it's hard work doing repetitive casting with such a heavy rod. I'll just shut up, bite down and get used to it :-).
Biggish, black flies (deep, murky water) with a contrasting wiggle tail gave one strike (one... - over 4 hours of fishing...). Felt like a big fish though, but most pike do on the strike.
But - now I have a much better sense of the topography of the lake, so I have an idea on where to cencentrate efforts the next time, so I will (finally, I hope) soon get one of those mythical +10kg pike that I still haven't caught.
If you're interested in pike flies, check out fellow Dane, Kenneth Hejnfelt, whom I met for the first time a while back. He ties some *really* nice pike flies. He's on Instagram.
All for now - PoD is just a shot from a few weeks ago. A small(ish) Mickey Finn tubefly, which is my favourite late season fly (visibility and provocation).
Have a great weekend!
Lars