Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 29 April 2022
Last week was kind of crazy. Thursday we had ice fishing group and Friday we handled all our reindeer and marked the last calves. Day temps has been around +15 celsius and snow level has been dropping. At night we have had around -10 celsius which is making melting slower. Tomorrow it should be heavy snowing and Monday heavy rain. Those all are signs of spring.
Yesterday we drove about half of our reindeer to forest in summer fielding area. This morning we moved other half with snowmobiles to their summer fielding area. We do have some reindeer at fence still, basicly our boys are waiting that their summer holiday can start. That will be probably in the end of May.
Satu has been doind shopping and getting things ready for our coming trip to Malaysia. I have been negotiating with our partners, so we could get things to Ashli Orang- project. Things are looking good and at least we will have some flies for guides and when things goes like planned, we will be able to ship one or even two rafting boats for them. For this I keep my fingers crossed.
Past few days email has been red, I have had lot of requests about fishing on coming summer. So if you are planning to fish with me, hurry up.
Back to last week’s ice fishing. In beginning it was not really fireworks, not bad but could be better. It was great weather, +20, no wind, ice was clear and had been few days so I knew that fish will be active. In the beginning they got some big perch and one whitefish. Then other good size whitefish and other. Little bit after noon every thing was dead, so I suggested to have coffee break before next active session which would start around two o’clock.
After coffee break fishing was getting better and better, some nice perch and also good size whitefish. Then around three o’clock one lady got strike, we all saw that it was big fish. She was carefully to get it up and we could see head coming from hole……. line broked. She tried to get fish her hand but too little too late. She asked if I had another similar mormyska. And yes I had. She continued fishing from same hole and not so long after again nice strike. Again she was carefully and was getting fish up slowly. I saw that she had burning cigarette on her hand, I was sure that she will burn line. She got fish up from hole and it was at least same size than the one she lost.
I started to took hook of from mouth and I realized that it was all ready off. No-one made big issue about that because fish was on the ice, game saved. She started to put maggots on hook when she saw that hook was cutted. Again same question, do I have another. I have but will be the last one. I gave similar golden mormyska to her again. This time it took 30 minutes when something happened. Again strike and good size whitefish on the ice.
You know sometimes we have sayings like it doesn’t matter which colour you use on fly as long that it is black. When ice fishing whitefish, you could say, it doesn’t matter what you use as long it is golden mormyska.
Tomorrow I will head to Russian border, and go ice fishing with some of my friends. We will have two night over in the cabin just 200 meters from border. We will fix fence between Russia and Finland to keep reindeer in Finland. We will have time for ice fishing and few drinks in the evening. I have loads of golden mormyska with me.
Have a nice weekend and go fishing
Mika the Legend
