Viking Lars | Saturday, 20 July 2024
It happens when you travel that fishing is extremely difficult, that the salmon aren’t running, that the rivers are high to too hot, that torrential rain keeps you off the water, that wind makes a cast impossible. What do you do then? It’s very different from person to person and trust me, I’ve seen people react in both the best and the worst possible ways.
Some people get annoyed and irritable and they are best left alone. Some people work even harder for a fish. Some sit down and tie flies or fine tune the gear. Some even leave and go home early. If it’s possible, some pull up the tent pegs and relocate to a different location. Some go into to full vegetable-mode, staring into the fire and doing nothing else than eating and sleeping (and…).
I try and pack for these conditions and make sure I’m not bored, Everything isn’t always possible with luggage restrictions and sometimes your pastime of choice might not be too travel friendly. I sometimes join a team in Norway that owns a small cabin. There’s always work to be done since it’s old, so slow fishing is good for the cabin. Last month we changed the roof over the shower, amongst many other small projects.
I like keeping my hands occupied. My daughter graduated high school three weeks ago and since she had a very strange affection for spoons when she was a child, I decided to carve her a spoon as a little extra gift. So I packed my small carving axe, a spoon knife and a small knife. Finding a piece of suitable wood is easy in Norway. Having a small project like this makes it easy to pass an hour or two every now and then.
In the rare even I’m happy with idle hands, there’s always the bonfire. Going down to the river for an hour of practice with the long rods is also something I do every now and then. Since I only fish really big rivers and heavy sinking lines on the really long rods once a year, a little practice is good.
It’s time to rig the summer gear for mackerel and sea bass. It’s blazing hot (by my standards, which is everything above 22 C) here in DK and the’s good for these more exotic summer guests. Soon we’ll be seeing the first tunas as well. Fishing for them is of course out of reach unless, but I want to get out on the water to see them this year. We get really huge ones - in excess of 600 pounds!
Have a great weekend!
Lars