Zander

Today was a time for a little Zander fishing. I was on the ice at 8 am. when it was still dark. It didn't took long to catch my first Zander of the day (and of the year). Start was good but after that it went a bit slower.
After a hour or so I found the fish again. The First five holes gave me a Zander each and after those I caught couple of more.

My icedrill and one of my fishing buddies.

My father and his friend were also icefishing with me and they did catch couple of Zander too.

An evidence from my catch. Couple of Zander fillets awaiting the frying pan.

Picture gallery

I have added a picture gallery to Photobucket. From there you can find pictures of the species I’ve already caught. There’s still some species missing, I will add them as soon as I have publishable pictures of them.

From the gallery you can find also the species I haven’t identified yet. Please contact me if you have any tips or hints to identify those species.

One of the species i haven't identified yet.

You can find my gallery from here: Species i've caught
I have also added the link under the “links”-menu on the right hand side of my blog.

Icefishing of Rainbows

Kivijärvi, the place where everything happened.

This week I was planning to head to the sea after seatrout. But then the winter decided to come and I was chancing my plans. I was never been icefishing after Rainbow Trout before. So, I called to the owner of the lakes and he confirmed that there was enough ice to hold up one grazy fisherman.
Then I headed to supermarket to buy some shrimps (baits) and next morning I was driving to Perniö (located in Southern Finland).

There it is, my first icefished Rainbow Trout

I was been fishing for about twenty minutes when I had first hit. Sadly I didn’t hook that fish. But then, at the next hole I had another hit and this time I hooked up the fish and after a good five minutes fight I was caught my first ever icefished Rainbow Trout. That was a species number nine for the year.

I fished there for few more hours and caught three more Rainbows and lost one as well. That was a nice and refreshing day on the ice.

The gear I was using.

And hey, sorry about the quality of the pictures, they’ve been shooted with my cell phone. My camera drank a class of sparkling wine about a year ago and haven’t work at the cold conditions ever since.

SUPERB SEASON OPENING

On third of January I had a day off from the work. The weather forecast looked fine so I decided to go fishing. I had heard good news about Viviparous Eelpout and Fourhorn Sculpin fishing from my friends. So I headed to the Airisto.

First species of the year.

About quarter past nine I dropped my pirk of the platform and very soon I had my first fish of the year. It was a tiny little Perch, but still a fish.

After a couple of more perch I noticed that there were some little fish on the surface. I changed to small mormuska (you can see it on the picture) and it took less than a minute to catch species number two. A Three-spined Stickleback. I think this is a species that is still missing from Steve Wozniak's long list.

Three-spined stickleback, on the right a small white mormuska with a white maggot

Every once and then I tried with a herring rig, in case there were some Baltic Herring around. And there was, ONE, WOHOO !

Baltic Herring

A bit later I finally caught my first and the only Fourhorn Sculpin. This fish is ugly like hell but somehow I stll like it a lot.

Ugly duckling

The European Smelt (Osmerus eperlanus).

Quite soon after the sculpin I caught another fish with my herring rig, and yes, it was another new species for the year. A small, toothy and stinky Smelt.

It was almost three 3 p.m. (it was gonna be dusk at four) when I was almost giving up. After all, I decided to try one more spot with a pirk. I felt one tiny bite and then nothing. I tried for a while more and started to lift my pirk up. When it was close to surface I noticed that there was a tiny fish on the hook. And I haven’t felt a thing! It was longish and wiggly, It was a Eelpout!

Tiny and wiggly Viviparous Eelpout.

Spiny and slimy Ruffe

After that I fished for a bit longer and caught one more species. The Ruffe is a slimy pest which lives everywhere. But now I was happy to catch one.

Eight species on a one day is a great result, much more than I expected. What a start for the year!

PS. I forgot to mention that eight species. It was a Roach, species you can catch almost everywhere and when ever you want.

New year, new targets

This year I will try how many species I can catch from the Finnish waters on a one year period. At 2010 I tried that too and my result was 35 species. But then there was many “easy” species missing from the list.

This year I’m targeting to 40, maybe 45 species if everything goes really, really well. There’s bunch of species that I haven’t caught yet from Finland. I think that 3 to 5 new species this year is more than possible to catch.

Here’s some of my targets (new species): The Alpine Bullhead (Cottus poecilopus). On the way to Norway, it should be quite easy to catch from Lapland.
The Ziege or Sabre Carp (Pelecus cultratus). It’s not easy but there should be good chances at the Canal of Saimaa.
The Brook Stickleback (Culaea inconstans). This should be quite sure to catch. The only population of the species in Finland is situated about 30 kilometers from my parents-in-law, so I'll give as many shots as necessary to catch one.
The Garfish (Belone belone). This is the species I’m gonna hunt for real. I have heard that in the Archipelago of Turku this species is nowadays actually quite common. Fishermen who are targeting seatrout do catch also garfish every now and then.

Besides of these four species, here’s couple of species that are possible to catch too; Butterfish (Pholis gunnellus), Spotted goby (Gobiusculus flavescens), The fifteen-spined stickleback (Spinachia spinachia), The European Sprat (Sprattus sprattus) and of course the mighty Atlantic Salmon.
My first attack of the year will be very soon, hopefully I can catch something………

I wish tight lines and screaming reels for all of you readers (I really hope that there’s more of you, not only Vesa) for the year 2012!