Turbo charged roaches and a slippery eel

At Friday 15^th of June my girlfriend  left to a holiday trip to Spain. I had promised to give her a ride to airport of Tampere and at the same trip I was able to check the local fishing possibilities. About twenty kilometers from the airport is situated some rapids called Kuokkalankosket. This is one of the best places in Finland for Asp fishing. So you can figure out what my primary target species was.

This was the place I caught my first Asp of the trip

I started fishing at noon. About one and a half hours later I had my first bite and I had a nice fight with an Asp of 1,4 kilos. Quite soon after my first fish I had another hit at the same place but then came the silence. Asps continued their chase of Bleaks but didn’t give any interest about my lures anymore.

And back he (or she) went. C&R of course.

I changed to another rapid. The Asps were splashing all over and I got couple of hits soon after I started. Few hours later I got a better hit and the fight was on.  It was a strong fish and I thanked it didn’t run down to the rapid. It was a nice fish of 1,7 kilos. I got one more juvenile Asp (about 300 grams) from the same place before I decided to chance place again. It was already ten a clock at night, I was supposed to sleep few hours in the car so I can fish all night after.

1,7 kilos of pure muscle and 95 kilos of something else

But I had come here to fish not sleep. So, another rapid, another shot. I started from the beginning of the rapid. There was few Asps  chasing  Bleaks again but all I could caught was a fail hooked Bleak every now and then. It was their spawning period so there was billions and billions of them in the rapids. So the Asps had more than enough food to chase and they totally ignored my tries to feed some plastic or wood to them. It was little bit over eleven now and it was getting a bit darker. I was leaving to another place to give a shot for a little Eel fishing with cutbaits (I had saved all my fail hooked Bleaks for bait) when I noticed a nice looking spot at the edge of the rapid. I casted my white Rapala Esko Team to the place and got a hit almost right away. It was a nice Zander of about 650 grams. Another cast and another Zander. Couple of cast without a fish and then I had bite again. The fish felt a bit different than those Zanders. And up came a Rainbow trout. Ten minutes, three fish, not bad!

The lures that gave me most of the action

A nightly Rainbow

Now it was finally time to move on. I had found a perfect looking place for Eel fishing earlier at the day. I set my rod out with a piece of Bleak on the hook. This was a first test for my new ProLogic bite alarms too. The alarm worked almost too well. I didn’t even get my ass on the stool when the alarm was already giving small signs of bite. The rod tip was nodding softly and the baitrunner reel was giving line centimeter by centimeter. I got enough of waiting anymore and decided to strike. And fish there was. I felt some kind strange wiggling at the end of the line, could it be Eel already. And it was. Amazing, I had been fishing for five minutes and yet I had caught my target species. After the Eel I caught one Zander with the bait. Actually I had at least ten bites, but I couldn’t hit anymore fish.

Eel of 1,16 kilos

I checked one more rapid (the most popular one in the area) after the Eel fishing. Didn’t catch anything else so I thought that it was finally time to give up. 21 hours of nonstop fishing is enough even for me. I hopped to my car and drove to Tampere. There was my next destination, a small pond that has a good population of small Tench, fair sized Crucians mixed with some Carp.

The sunrise at the rapid.

But before I started to fish again I took a few hours nap at my car, bought some more snacks from the supermarket and just chilling out a bit. At six o’clock at night I was ready to fish again. My groundbait was slowly making its job and there started to be more and more fish activity at my spot. First I caught only some small Tench, after nine some Crucians appeared to the place and some of them even excepted my sweet corn as a dinner. But I didn’t managed to catch anything bigger. I didn’t even see any Carp.

My biggest Crucian carp weighed a bit over 400 grams.

At midnight I gave up again and started my way back to home. For some reason I was quite tired and it took about six hours to get back home. It’s a pretty long time for a 170 kilometers of ride. I stopped twice to get some sleep between driving.

After all the trip was another success. Once again two new species for the year (now on 35). The Asp was my target and the Eel was very welcomed bonus. And I will catch that Carp later this summer….