Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 23 August 2019
I have always liked August. Darkening evening and nights, waters are cooling but days are still mostly warm and sunny. In June there is often flood and waters are cold, and it is quite rare that you have any good hatches in the beginning of June. Hatches start normally after mid June but it can also be that waters are dropping and warming up, especially July is that kind of month. Fishing is good thru whole summer but August offers something macigal. Past two weeks provit.
Last Saturday I was guiding with rafting boat on lower part of Kitka. Water was around +14 celsius max and after some heavy rains level was rising little bit. Fishing was best for this season. On Friday I guided the same group and teach some basics about casting and fishing so they would be ready for Saturday. We fished at Kuusinki river on Friday and everyone caugth some graylings, but they were little bit slow with strike back so big ones kept swimming without netting. Saturday was different story. From every spot we fished we caught some nice graylings and this time there were no mistakes with hooking. Everyone was feeling good and we moved on. Next stop was highlight. Beginner caught in one spot about ten graylings as biggest was 39 cm. Others got also some around 35 cm graylings. Satu hit the record for the day with 44 cm grayling with dryfly.
After lunch we kept fishing and I landed 41 cm grayling as one guests landed 42 cm grayling. Totally during the day we caught almost 50 graylings between 25 -44 cm and 5 trout size 30 cm. Trouts were sidehits so we don’t count them.
Sunday I went guiding to Kuusinki river with Russian gentleman. Aim was to get running trout from Russia and some nice size graylings. He was spinning so I need to have different options to fish. We went one of my favourite spots and started to fish grayling with fly and weight in the end. This technique is allowed with small flies size 8 or smaller. Few first cast was training how to fish and then he got idea. There was nice looking spot behind a big stone and he casted on that. Immediately when flies dropped on water there was strike. Big one, rod bended to double, strike back, fish made another pull and …….. line cutted. Big running trout took fly and game over. We changed to spinners and small spoons. He was using single hooks without barbless and first he was having some issues to hold fishes but after loosing one or two he changed the tactics. He landed some okay graylings and few small trouts as sidehits again. We kept fishing until 1 am with wobblers but had no contact with running trout anymore. Guest was anyway happy about evening. By the way we saw two golden eagle on the way fishing.
Yesterday we had people fishing on the lake. Huge hatching and rises from rainbow trout but really not contact with spinning. I took caddis and got strike but fish was trying to get under deck (we fished from boat) and when I stopped the fish line broke. Same man who were fishing on Sunday got strike but he broke the line on jump. Finally I caught one with ”secret” test fly. During the fishing we caught heavy rain, thunder and hail (ice balls size of your finger tip).
Today making tvshow for Korean tv on our lake. Great fishing and some strikes for ”actor” but he could hook them. I caught one with test fly and Satu caught one with spinner. Both of them were jumping machines. Again there was lot of rises and it was difficult to stop fishing when you know how great it is but director was strict and I needed to start cooking for tv.
After finishing this we jump on car with Satu and start driving to Sweden, Ammärnas. Short weekend fishing there and having ”holiday”. I have been guiding past two weeks everyday and this weekend is free so I go fishing.
Have a nice weekend, tight lines
Mika from Finland
