Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 30 November 2018
It has happened before and will happen again. You get forcing feeling that you need to go and fish certain place now or this evening. Even you thought that no fishing today. In this case everything started May 2015. Our Ruka-Kuusamo tourist association contacted me and ask if there is point to take journalist from Fisch & Fang magazine to make article about fishing in our area. I told them that yes, I think it is one of biggest fishing magazine in German speaking area, so please take them. And then they connected me and journalist to make fishing schedule to them from Monday to Friday, river fishing and lake fishing, dates would be around mid August.
So I built schedule to us which was looking like this, Monday arrival, staying in lodge and dining, Tuesday grayling fishing in down part of Kitka, Wednesday rafting and fishing in upper part of Kitka, Thursday lake fishing for pike with my friend. ( I would be already guiding in Russia), Friday shopping and departure. We changed some emails about fishing, flies etc so they would be ready when arriving. I had no idea how enthusiastic fisherman they would be or just journalists. So when their arrival date came I was little bit nervous how it would go and excited to meet them. I knew my stuff but …..
So Monday 17.8.2015 was exact date for arrival. In the morning I started to have this feeling when checking final forecast for coming week. Maybe we should go extempore fishing this evening. We don’t have Kuusinki river in our program at all and it is famous about running trout. At the same time I had doubts how guests would think about this sudden change. I went to pick them up from airport and it was obvious that they are fisherman and then journalists and beside that really nice guys. So I took them to lodge and told them about my idea to go fishing after dinner and fish quite late night. They were and are fisherman so of course they said yes.
After dinner we drove to Kuusinki river and had short hike to pool. While walking were joking about how we forgot our landing nets to car. I told them that is not our biggest problem, it will be trout which are not easy to catch and there is not so many running each year. ( we are talking about 300-400 trout/year, which are coming to spawn from Russia to Finland). Conclusion was that because we don’t have nets we might caught something. (It is like when you have umbrella there is no rain and when don’t have one it will be rainy). When coming to pool we set up gears and they were making some video about fishing, techniques etc. I showed where to start run and went with guys to spot hottest stones and holes and so on. There was still daylight left so first run you could see how things are. There was nothing during the first runs, just one maybe a small bite, just behind one stone. Maybe it was wing tasting or something like that.
Night and darkness came around 22.00 o’clock. I try to push guys to make another run but, they decided that I have to go. So I pick up tube fly which I got earlier from Italian guests and start my run. Benny and Birger came with me and we talk about fishing and things like that. I came to hotspot (in place where you can cast to stone where was maybe small take) and made my cast and right after fly dropped in the water it happened. Strike and fish on. I knew from strike that this one is trout but I had no idea about size. It was not really pulling the line but I could hear some jumps and splashes so it was okay one. I had to hold it quite tight because pool is small one and just downstream there is about 500 meter long heavy rapid and you can’t follow fish in the nighttime over there. After short fight we were landing nice 64 cm silver beauty. Benny helped me because, we didn’t have landing net, I was using 15 feet DH rod and I didn’t want to pull fish on shore, it would be released for sure. So after photos and filming the beauty went back to the river. I finished my run right away and Benny and Birger made short ones, but no-one really wanted to continue anymore. So I made fire and we sat down, had some snacks and they were making interviews and enjoying camp fire.
This all happened just because I got this strange feeling to go fishing even not planned. If you have Fisch & Fang issue 6/2016, you can find article from there and there was also dvd about their trip. I have magazine but I can’t read German so I have no idea what they were writing about.
Have a nice weekend and if you get that feeling go fishing
Mika
Ps. some photos are taken by Birger and credit to him about those.
Pss. grayling fishing was also good and they got 1 m pike from lake with fly.
Pss. bottle was gift from great German guys
