Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 1 October 2021
Sunday I had short fishing trip by myself. It was not easiest fishing, still somehow okay. It was grey and cloudy afternoon and some heavy blows now and then. I got few graylings and two side hit trout. I thought that it was last fishing day of the season and I will hang gears for wintertime.
Beginning of the week I was builting fences and working that we get some things ready before round-up season and winter. Tuesday I got email that someone wants to do some grayling fishing and wants to learn about river fishing. They had experience sea and lakes but river fishing was not so familiar to them.
We made appointment for Thursday. They were spinners so I pick up gears for them. When collecting gears and lures I remembered old idea about how I used to fish graylings when I was using spinning rod years and years back. The lure is called mutuleech. It has flat body, eye on top of flat and hook on upside. You know like jig hooks. Lure have tail from marabou. You can use those for icefishing or spinning if you now technique. In some rivers in our area those are forbidden but in this one it is allowed to use those. It is kind jig fishing in rapids. You can be accurate and fish around rocks etc.
So we started with those and man got one grayling pretty fast. They fished pockets but there was not really luck with those. I could see that woman got little bit frustraded about being stuck pretty often so I made for her some urrilitka. I hate that fishing style even it is effective and good for catching fish. I do use it sometimes when people are spinning and grayling fishing is getting difficult. Urrilitka is line which is length of the rod, in the end there is piece of bending weight, normally used in fishing net. There is two side line with flies. Idea is cast upstream and reel in with speed of stream. It is basically nymphing with spinning rod.
Lady got fast few graylings and some strikes and smile was coming back to her face. First catch was double. After lunch break we moved upstream to other rapid, there was good spot for mutuleech, really small pocket but I knew that there is graylings for sure. I left man fish that, I moved upstream with lady to fish other spots with urrilitka. She got one strike but nothing else.
We both saw that there was some rises on the neck and we moved there. I knew that this urrilitka won’t work anymore so I changed floating weight to the end. That is basically fly fishing with dries or just underneath from surface. I only had 5 gr weight and she could reach rising fishes. It was our luck that there start to be rises also just next to bank, just 30 meters upstream from us. Our luck was also that there was good place to cast. She made few casts but nothing, she had superpupa and small nymph. I put small black dry fly and left small nymph on place. First cast and fish on, dry fly made to job and she landed +30 cm grayling. She got few strikes after that but couldn’t hook fishes. It was good experience for her. She told me afterwards that she had great doubts about catching anything from river. They earlier fishing trips to rivers have been zero.
Man had have also some action. He had hooked good size fish but cut the line with that. And also he saw how good size grayling had followed the lure. It was good guiding day again. In the evening I had Paliskunta’s meeting, reindeer herders meeting, I didn’t have time change so I went waders on.
I try to go fishing on coming weekend and next week I will have one more trip to guide, depends about weather. Then it will be end of fishing season. It has been great season so far, I try to finish strong.
Have a nice weekend and go fishing
Mika the Legend