Category Archives: In English

It’s on!

It’s not too often you get to open the Baltic seatrout season in February here in Finland. We had very cold weather in January and the sea was completely frozen, but now in the February some plus degrees, rain and strong southern winds have already dissipated the ice from most of the south coast.

We were supposed to go the last weekend already, but I caught a cold and couldn’t go. Feeling somewhat better and very anxious to go I persuaded the guys to go out this Sunday even if the conditions looked quite harsh: there were some 15 m/s southern winds (up to 20 m/s in gusts) and a lot of snow predicted. The morning drive through the blizzard to the coast was painful and even dangerous, but when we eventually got to Hanko, the weather wasn’t that bad.

The wind forced us to seek out some new spots from the northern side of Hanko peninsula, but it worked out well in the end. We found some very nice new spots and early in the morning ran in to a school of feeding trout, when my dear fishing buddy Jari caught two 50+ centimeter trouts back to back within the first 15 minutes (though he is a well-known mixed user and caught them on a spoon rather than on a fly).

After that hot start we had our hopes quite high but they were brought down to your usual seatrouters state of mind when we had absolutely no contact to fish for the rest of the day. But in this business you have to consider a two-fish day quite successful and anyhow it was just so unbelievably great to be out there in the sea and casing some line again.

Kuva, jonka Juho-Matti Paavola (@juhomattipaavola) julkaisi 22. 02ta 2016 klo 2.31 PST

They never knew what hit ’em. #fishingninja #ninjafishing #seatrout #searunbrown #fishing #flyfishing #coastalflyfishing #coastalfishing #Finland #hanko #kalastus #perhokalastus #meritaimen #mertsari #mpninja #freehelsingfors Kuva, jonka Juho-Matti Paavola (@juhomattipaavola) julkaisi 21. 02ta 2016 klo 9.50 PST

My friends even shot and edited a short video about the two fish caught. Warning: includes beutiful sea trouts caught & released on spinning gear, can cause serious need to get out and do some fishing.

Pike fly fisher’s livingroom

It’s been long, way too long since the last post. I guess all this writing have just been too tiring: I’ve been writing in work, when I get out of work I write my thesis and then I also have been writing about fishing for magazines and even cotrubuted to wonderful Chasing Silver Magazine’s blog.

It really didn’t feel like writing some more would be the way to unwind after all that, so Huove has been neglected for quite some time. Gladly I’ve had the change to do some fishing, but the number of fishing days have been very low for last year also.

Just the other day I went through old posts here. It was really a pleasure to look through all these memories from the trips before, so I decided it would be time to start writing again mostly for my own sake, just to be able to return to some of the tirps and the feelings there.

I will start easy and make just a short post with a picture. All these interior design blogs are highly popular, so now Huove will take a step towards that direction: here’s a pike fly fisher’s living room. I’m willing to dish out some tips and even makse some designs for you too, themes can vary from trout bedroom to asp in the cellar.

Summer of ‘11

I finally got around to editing material from our 2011 trip to Norway. It was about the time, no doubt. Here you have a short story about what can happen in one sunny afternoon if things are going as they should (and as all you salmon fishing enthusiastics out there well know, they certainly don’t always do that) accompanied with few stills and some notes, this time in English for our international visitors.

One Sunny Afternoon in Norway

This video should be enjoyed in HD and full screen to catch all the action.

All (well ok, opening scene is from the next day, but all the fishing is done in the same day) this material was filmed in just one day on our favorite river Repparfjordelva in Finnmark, northern Norway. It was early august and the weather had been warm and sunny for quite some time, but it had rained also, so even if the water was warm, well over 17°C at highest if I recall it right, the water level was still quite ok. Just the perfect conditions for a dry fly!

First evening gave us hints of things to come: In just a couple hours I got a few nice rises to our favorite salmon dry fly Pompero and Samuli was able to haul in one nice grilse form this unbelievable small hole in the middle of the hardest rapids. It was quite a surprise, since it was more pocket water kinda place where you would expect to catch trout, but not salmon.

The next morning we started early. The sun was already blazing from the clear blue sky; there were literally no cloud in sight. We drove to one of our favorite pools in the river and were really happy to find it unoccupied. The fishing was good right from the beginning and the salmon were banging our dries like crazy and we had the whole pool just for us. After missing 4 or 5 rises I finally got my strike calibrated (we belong the “strike as fast as you possibly can” –school) and hooked a couple of nice grilse. Samuli also had one, a nice start for the day.

Rod bending under the clear blue sky. Photo by Samuli Tursas.

Sometimes things just seem to fall into their right places. First photo by Samuli Tursas.

Fishing slowed down after an hour or so and we thought it might be a good idea to move a few kilometers upstream. Since the fish seemed to be in good moods I took out the video camera and started shooting. It took little bit over one minute of filming for Samuli to catch that first fish on video. We switched places and Samuli shot for five more minutes until I caught the other fish. Fishing was just red hot! We got few rises from the same pool after that but it really was quite disturbed, so we decided to change the place again and went to this one pool that has produced quite a few big fish for us in the past. I stayed back to shoot and Samuli sneaked to good position. It was his second cast when the big one rose to the fly. It was quite unbelievable and I even got it all on camera.

The following day we took a hike to tributary to the main river. There were a lot of fish in the river, you could spot them from high cliffs, but they weren’t in the mood to bite anymore even if the weather was still warm. I don’t know if they were already sensing the coming change in the weather or what. Samuli caught one with Red Francis, but otherwise it was just the opposite of the previous day.

Waterfall.

It’s not always that easy. Photo by Samuli Tursas.

The next day a cold front rolled over Finnmark and the temperature dropped to around 5°C. The worst thing was that even if it was cold and cloudy it really didn’t rain at all so the water level as well as the temperature went down and the fishing shut off completely. It wasn’t a big surprise that I didn’t catch anything after the first day, since I really can’t catch salmon with anything else than dry flies (last time I caught anything under the surface was probably in 2008 and yes, I do fish a lot with more traditional methods also, especially in cold conditions) and while dries can work in cold water also (2012 we got rises when water temperature was well under 10°C), our experience is that the water temperature needs to be rising to get the salmon interested in anything on the surface. What was really surprising was that Samuli, who is much more versatile fisherman and usually able to find fish in any conditions, didn’t have any success either. We fished for five more days and only thing we caught was one beautiful brownie that was sipping mayflies off the surface. Only smaller trout dry I had with me was the traditional Finnish caddis pattern Nalle Puh which was not really anything close to those mayflies, but gladly the fish wasn’t too picky and accepted the offer anyway. Traditional trout fishing was a nice change of pace especially when the salmon fishing was slow and definitely something we will be looking more closely in the future.

I do fish wet flies when the conditions demand, but just can’t catch anything with them.

Norway, you just gotta love the place.

True Fly Fishing

Just one more hour and I’m off to Gotland to fish for some nice silvery searun browntrouts, better known as seatrouts here. Oh how long can one hour be?

I amused myself with small Youtubesession, and found this quite hilarious video. I guess that’s one way to fish too, starting from 1:30. True fly fishing (just missing a nice C&R shot at the end)!

Timelapse landscapes

From time to time, in the vast sea of information known as the Internet, you run into something that yanks your jaw open and leaves it there for a good while. This time it was these absolutely amazing videos. Blend of HDR timelapse photography of beautiful scenery and music offers a visual experience that gives me the chills (especially the second one).

Landscapes: Volume One

Landscapes: Volume Two

How is this related to fly fishing? Well, I ran into these videos while exploring a new Norwegian ezine Vakmag. Besides that there is no relation, just a need to share things I find worth sharing.

Fly fishing for Sea Bass in Sicily (inc. video)

I was on a holiday in Sicily with my fiancé in the end of June. It was mostly just about spending some quality time together but I managed to sneak a 7wt Sage Fli fly rod to my back bag. Well ok, I did ask for permission first, but I’m lucky enough to have a girl who understands these little quirks of mine.

I managed to get couple of hours of fishing at one evening in Giardini Naxos near Taormina, where our hotel was. It happened to be the most windy day of our trip, but Sage was heavy enough to cast Tinseli even in gusts. Tinseli is a classic Finnish flashy streamer tied almost purely out of flashabou. It is a murderous fly anywhere in the world: pretty much every predatory fish in the planet have some small silvery bait fish on their menu and Tinseli is a perfect imitation of those.

I got some great general advice about fly fishing in Mediterranean in Medflyfish –forums. From there I also found a link to the gold mine of information about fishing in Sicily: Spinning Sicila Nord –pages. Apparently these guys run guided fishing trips for spinfishermen in Sicily. The site has a wealth of information about Sicilian fishing. It’s in Italy, but Google Translate does decent job now a days when translating from some major language to English. According to the SSN guys fishing in Sicily is pretty good compared to some other tourist destinations. Mediterranean tends to be overfished, but the situation around the island is pretty good and the sea is teeming with different predatory fish like barracudas and snappers, though sea bass seems to be the most important target species for SSN spinners. Sicily also has good black bass fishing in freshwater lakes and the picture gallery even has some shots of rainbows on streamside. I wanted to do some salt water fly fishing. Wet wading in warm blue Mediterranean sounded like a nice change from seatrout fishing, which is done when water temperatures are nearing the freezing point.

Fishing at the clear blue Mediterranean.

So I got some nice advice from the forums and SSN and had a little lookout on a bus tour to mount Etna. We drove through the coastal city of Giardini Naxos and I found very nice spot with a huge breakwater and some volcanic rocks. Then on one free evening we headed there, I geared up and started to fish behind these huge rocks that were breaking the waves rolling in from the sea. The spot just looked fishy, waves braking into white water, just like a place where a seatrout would love to lay and stalk for the pray. And as it happens, just five casts and I have a fish on and not a small one. I just couldn’t believe it myself, so it took couple of seconds to actually set the hook properly but luckily I managed to do that. Fish put up a decent fight, though the hardest part was to get down to sea level from the breakwater I was fishing from. I found a large rock jammed between two huge cubical pieces of the breakwater, climbed down from there and somehow managed to do all this while keeping tension in line and without losing the fish. When I finally got the fish to my hand it indeed proved to be a sea bass around 60 cm (24 inch) in length. It was ecstatic moment: I came to fish for species I knew nothing about in a place I’ve never been in, worked it all out in my head and had results on the fifth cast. Some shouting was involved, but gladly the wind was blowing so furiously that I didn’t disturb too many people.

My first sea bass ever.

At that point I thought I had it all figured out, but the next couple of hours drew me back to the ground. I didn’t get any more contacts to fish, no pulls no nothing. But it really didn’t matter, I had done what I came to do: to fish in the clear blue Mediterranean in the shadow of towering mount Etna. It was just a great bonus that I actually managed to catch something.

View from Taormina to Giardini Naxos with old lady, mount Etna on the backround. The breakwater can be seen on the point on left side.

Sicily truly is a beautiful place to visit whether you fish or not.

And to make it even better, my dear girlfriend happened to be filming on her Nokia C6 cell phone just at the right time. Idea was to take some film of me casting, but she actually managed to catch the take and some of the ensuing battle on camera. So here you go, please enjoy.