Flattie hunt

It was end of the September when couple of friends of mine managed to find few juvenile Turbots from the south coast of Finland. Turbot is not very common species in Finland. There’s few areas where every 20^th flatfish or so could be a Turbot. On the other hand because of their rarity no one is really fishing for them. So it’s hard to tell how much you really could catch them if you would target specifically Turbot.

With a small hint of hot spot from my friend I finally headed for flatfish hunt at October. I started from the small beach they had caught their specimens couple of weeks ago. With a help of my headlamp I was scouring the beach and looking of any signs of the juvenile Turbot. After three hours or so I had not seen any flatties. All I caught was a Three-spined stickleback (only cause it was quicker than me) and I also scooped up couple of Straightnose pipefishes with my bare hands.

Straightnose pipefish (Nerophis ophidion).

I hopped to my car and drove to the next potential beach. I had been there about fifteen minutes and I was just at the end of the beach when I saw a flat and round little fish lying on the bottom. There it was, a Turbot (small one but still a Turbot). When I dropped my little piece of worm first time right in front of it, it took a short sprint away from me. Well, I followed it and tried again. There were absolutely no reactions to my bait. I had decided that I will catch that fish even thought I had to spend whole night trying it. I changed my bait to a red pinkie and offered it to the fish. It tried to taste it immediately but I could not hook it. So I kept trying and finally after few minutes (which by the way felt like hours) it bit again and finally it was mine! How it can feel so good to catch a fish that can fit completely to your palm?

A juvenile Turbot (Scophthalmus maximus or Psetta maxima).

I tried couple of more places in hope of the Flounder but all I could catch was one Sand goby. So I headed back home and was able to go sleeping at six o’clock at the morning.

Turbot on its own element.

Few days later I headed to another small beach in search of the Common goby. The first looks to the water showed that there were plenty of gobies to fish. In this point I have to mention that I was fishing at bright day light. Most of the people hunting for smallest goby species are fishing in dark. I tried to concentrate to the smaller specimens because the “bigger” ones would be most likely Sand gobies. I managed to catch over twenty gobies and at home I found out that there were two Common gobies among them.

Common goby (Pomatoschistus microps).

After these two trips my year count is now on 44 hooked species from Finnish waters plus one “hand picked” species (Straightnose pipefish). Also my all times species count raised to 121 thanks to my first ever Turbot.

Few short attacks after different species

After we had got back from Norway (report will come as soon as I have time and inspiration to write it) I had one week of vacation with my girlfriend. We had planned to make a road trip to eastern Finland. After an 1400 kilometers and 17 and a half hours drive from Norway it was really refreshing to hit the road again at next day….

On the second day we stopped at the city of Joensuu where it was supposed to be almost a 100 percent sure place for Dace. Only problem was that we had borrowed a fridge to our car, but nobody had told us that it has two different settings cold and HOT. So when I opened the fridge it was like sauna inside and you can guess what had happened to my worms and maggots. Oh yeah, all dead. Well, I decided to give a go with dead maggot. But all I could catch was one Roach and one small Ide.

Next day I bought a box of worms from Savonlinna and at the afternoon I gave a chance to them at one lake that was full of Dace. Or so I had read from the wonderful world of internet. I found a nice looking, very narrow sound with a strong current. That’s the place I thought because Dace likes to swim at the current. I caught some Bleak, Perch, Roach and one small Ide again but no Dace from here either.

The sand castle of Lappeenranta

We woke up at the city of Imatra and headed south to Lappeenranta. After checking out the famous sand castle we drove to the banks of Saimaa canal. There I had few hours chance to catch my first ever Sabre carp. There’s only one good place to hit Sabre carp in Finland and it’s here at the canal. From here I caught Bleak, Roach, Perch, Ruffe, Bream and White bream. It would be a lottery win to catch one with a three hours trying, so no Sabres for me this time.

At least I caught something from the canal.

Next week came and I made one trip after one “easy” species I still haven’t caught this year. It was a Black goby. I have one area nearby at my home it is almost sure to catch one. And because I was thinking like that it turned out to be very hard to find even one. It was almost getting dark when I finally managed to land one tiny, dark brown fish I was after. At last even one species I was targeting surrendered.

The Black goby (Gobius niger).

My last species hunting trial was at Saturday two weeks ago. I drove over hundred kilometers to one nice looking place where I was sure I can find some Common goby and if I was lucky enough maybe some Butterfish or even Two-spotted goby. I walked by the shore and finally found a nice still place with a sand bottom. And there was fish too. There was lot of tiny juvenile Three-spined sticklebacks but among them there was even some other fish and looked just like gobys. Hmmm, gobys in the mid water, could they be Two-spotted gobys? After an hour of hard trying I caught one goby from the school. And it was a Sand goby! What the hell they were doing at the mid water they were supposed to lay at the bottom. After that I went after the smaller gobys that were laying at the bottom like they should do. There was at least 50 of them at the very small area. Normally they are greedy bastards but now I couldn’t catch even one of them. They came to sniff my bait but didn’t even try to taste or swallow it. Nerve breaking endeed. On the way back to the car I tried to find some Butterfish or even some fish between the bladderwracks but all I could catch was two Perch.

So after all these trips I’m now on 41 species this year. Next on my hit list is a Carp, hopefully that trip will go little bit better.