Climate change????

There it is again, colder than ever before. Winter, I mean. I don't recall any other year that the winter has come this hard and this early. The temperature has been below -15'c for the whole weekend now and there's been people ice fishing already, and it's not even December yet!!

Last winter was very cold as I have stated here before. Ice cover was thick and it took ages to even start melting as the spring came so late. It felt like the nature was a bit upset after the winter and the fishing wasn't so good anymore.

Now we are possibly having something worse. The climate sure has changed for these few years but do we have enough data to do any reliable statistics? Could this be just normal variation in weather?

Another well documented period of time in finnish history with similar weather conditions was between 1939 and 1941. Summer 1939 was known to have been very hot and long. The following winter 1939-1940 was one of the coldest and hardest of the century for the finns, not just for the weather. Summer 1940 was hot and dry, so dry that all the farming suffered and the harvest was bad. Winter 1940-1941 was dry and very cold and the following summer 1941 was very hot and dry. The dryness continued until the summer/autumn of 1942 and caused severe problems with the nation's food supplies as the stocks had been depleted during the winter war in 1939-1940. Short time of peace from April 1940 to June 1941 still couldn't solve the problem and during the first winter of continuation war in 1941-1942,  starvation seemed to be imminent.

The winter 1941-1942 was rather warm and rainy, so was summer 1942. Water and temperature levels normalized. So why all this blabber about old stuff? Just an example that these weather anomalies have been around forever. Some summers are hot and some winters are cold and vice versa. With this geographic location, the weather could change a lot depending on where the wind blows from etc..

There could be a few cold winters but nothing to really worry about at this point. Just keeping my fingers crossed that I can go fishing early in the spring....

Beginning of the end

I've had a few trips to seaside since my previous post. The worst possible conditions are making this soon ending season a nightmare for me.

Last winter was the coldest for 70 years and all the water was covered with a thick layer of ice. Winter was also very long and the spring very short, it turned in to a summer almost instantly. Summer was also one of the hottest summers ever and the water temperatures were way too high for fishing pike. Water vegetation became an issue ruining most of the best pike fishing period in the early autumn.

I'll have to admit that this year made me a much humbler fisherman, last year I thought I knew something about fishing for pike but now, back to the drawing board once again with empty thoughts.

Officially I will end my season on the next weekend as we're having our annual fishing trip to south-west coast. No need to make myself more embarrassed, it's time to start concentrating on the next season. New season, new tricks in my sleeve. Possibly a new, bigger boat, new fishing waters, new pikes. New flies, new tactics, that's my solution. Of course, if the winter gives me a chance, I'd still go fishing, but officially I'd say "that's it" at this point.

A few more fishing trip reports will appear on this blog this year and then I will mostly concentrate on fly patterns, hooks, tying materials, tackle, boats etc.

I have also some ideas for targeting other species than pike and seatrout. This season it seemed that the perch population has grown again as it had mysteriously disappeared a few years ago. We had a change to land a few good sized perches together with some zanders. Zander population has gone weak both in numbers and size. I remember from about ten years ago, we could easily catch a dozen 50+ cm zanders on one night. Now it's difficult to catch even one small bugger. Sad but true.