Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Monster pike!

Finally! Yes! Amazing! I'm speechless. Two days ago I went out together with Philip for some pike fishing in the sun. About 23 degrees, only sun and very strong north winds made our expectations low for the day. Fortunately, we was proven else since a huge fish was landed in less than ten minutes on our first stop. I'll take it from the beginning.

Last week I had several guided trips. Most of them successful. Friday gave 23 pikes in a four hour trip with first time Swedish visitors. Saturday I was visited by Mattias and his son Isak for their third guided trip with me. During their previous guided trip with me we managed to catch a nice 109cm pike and I knew that we would need a little bit luck to beat that fish this time.

It didn't take long until the first fish was landed and only an hour later we had a very nice double strike. At first, I thought that Mattias was hooked into a stone but soon enough the "stone" started to move and we realized that this was a very good fish! First we landed Isaks fish in the net and maybe five minutes later, after a hard fight, Mattias great pike was also secured in the net.

This lady measured 105cm and was 8,8 kilos. A great fish in great condition! Happy times in the boat. We ended the day with 20 pikes in total but we also had a massive follower twice at our very last stop. First this fish followed Mattias lure and I immediately saw that this fish was at least +10kg. About five minutes later this fish followed my lure also and I noticed that this fish had a small wound in the top of its head. Amazing to see this big fish but we headed back happy with the stunning 105cm fish from the morning in our memories.

I was off work two days ago and this is where to continue the story. Since we had the big follower a couple of days earlier, I decided to go back with Philip to the same area and see if we could catch some nice fish at the same spot. Actually, I was joking with Philip and told him "Let's go out and catch that big motherf*cker!". It sounds a bit to good to be true, but that's exactly what we did. In the second cast, Philip caught a nice fish over 80cm. Just the next cast after that, he once again got a massive strike. This fish was big, for sure! I told him "Maybe it is the same fish?!?"

A scary minute later the fish was secured in the net and we enjoyed total happiness. This fish was HUGE! But how big could it be? Well, we measured the fish to be impressive 118cm long and weighed 12,51 kilos. A new personal best for Philip and also the biggest fish I have netted here in Karlskrona. The fish was caught on a Beastly tail 23 from Renz-Stein lures.

We continued fishing and within the first hour we landed several more fish around 80-90cm. Not really what we had expected with the conditions given but that's also what so great with fishing. Like the good man Forest Gump once said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get".

// Daniel Wickman
   2016-06-01