It's getting more and more difficult

This morning I took my boat on a trailer with me and drove to the rocky and shallow archipelago. Pasi drove from Tampere to meet me at the shore where I had time to put the boat in the water before he arrived.

It was a bit tricky to open knots from the ropes as they were all frozen. Also my depthfinder was unreadable at that temperature. Luckily it was sorted out when sun started to shine and the air warmed up a bit.

We headed to the other side of the bay, which is full of nice shallow and rocky coves. When I first saw the water, I knew it's gonna be difficult; The water was like coffee with a dab of cream and it was low, about 50 cm below normal level. Also all the rocky shores and little islets looked so different now. This is more than enough to upset the big mamas.

We started fishing from one of the rocky lagoons where Pasi had a pike mayhem on our previous trip. Pasi is a die hard lure maniac and I also decided it would be easiest to use jerkbaits instead of flies. With this visibility, we needed to fish every square meter of water very carefully because the lure was only visible until the depth of 15 cm. Getting strikes from there would be almost impossible.

We fished the first rocky pools which smelled like pike. Not a single bite, not a surprise though.

We moved further on until we arrived to vast shallow reed beds between two bigger islands. As we started fishing the long passages in the reed bed area, water started to flow in from the outer sea. This water was much clearer now and I could see my lure again.

The place was more than ideal for big autumn pikes and the water looked fine now. Still no bites. More casting to the lonely rocks inside the coves. FISH ON! A small little bugger, WAIT A MINUTE, It is not a pike at all.

Yeah, it's silver, not gold....

I had to take a picture from the bloody bream that was really hooked from its mouth. I've got plenty of them with jerkbaits and pike flies hooked from the sides or the neck but none has been hooked from the mouth before.

So we fished and fished, place after place and still no bites. I was getting frustrated as we had fished reed beds, rocky lagoons, deeper banks etc. and still nothing.

Smells like 'big mama'

We checked more places with the same results, nothing at all. Best offering was the coffee break between two island that gave us some shelter from the cold wind. It was unbelievably warm and relaxing to drink some hot coffee in a warm autumn sun.

Nobody was home, we checked.

After the coffee break, we headed back to the shore and fished a few hot spots on the way there. With no bites at all. And someone still dares to say that it is so easy to fish pike.

Coffee, fisherman's best friend.

After all, this was a great trip. Weather was fine, it just can't get any better this time of the year. I'll have great time memorizing nice trips like this in the long winters.