Twenty-one

I have visited our neighboring country Estonia several times but have never fished there before. At June it was finally time to fix this horrible mistake.

I arrived to Tallinn by ferry on the morning and started to drive around to look if I can find some nice looking fishing spots. After checking couple of places I stopped to River Pirita just about five kilometers east from the downtown of Tallinn.

Nice, sheltered fishing spot.

At the time I got to the river it was raining buckets. Well there was a couple of bridges nearby so I moved under the bigger bridge and found a nice sheltered place to fish at. My only goal for this trip was to catch at least one fish no matter the size nor species.

Let it rain...

This was actually a very easy job. There was tens of aggressive Three-spined sticklebacks hanging around and it took about two seconds to catch the first one. I had added a country number 21 to my list. I caught about ten more sticklebacks and few Bleak before I headed shopping (just couple of cans or bottles of beer, long drinks and wine) to the town.

Estonian Three-spined stickleback.

After packing my summer refreshments to my car I parked to the harbor and went back fishing. I was fishing at the dock and thought I’ll catch some Round gobies and maybe some Perch. The other half went right when I caught about ten gobies. I also caught one small Viviparous eelpout as a surprise catch.  

Round goby (Neogobius melanostomus).

Viviparous eelpout (Zoarces viviparus).

A nice trip in not so nice weather gave me nothing less than a one more country fished.

Stay tuned. Some more countries and fish species coming soon….

Danube gobies

At the start of the August I flew with my girlfriend to the Central Europe for one weeks summer holiday. We started our trip from Budapest and travelled from there by train to the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava.

I set my phone to alarm at 4.15 of our second morning at Bratislava. After a quick breakfast I left from our apartment and headed to the Danube river. When I got to the shore I realized the current of the river was way too fast to fish from the bottom with my light gear. So I decided to try if I could find any new species between the rocks at the shore line. The only bait I had was a can of sweetcorn I had bought from the supermarket the day before. Well, sweetcorn is useless when playing with small hooks and hunting for gobies, bullheads etc. So I started to turn around the rocks and finally managed to find some small worms to use as a bait. After that it didn’t take too long to catch my first Danubian fish and it was also my first fish from the Slovakian waters. There is several different species of gobies at the Danube river and of course I caught the only one I had caught before. The Round goby has conquered also the Europe’s second longest river. Soon I caught another Round goby. 

Round goby (Neogobius melanostomus). Bratislava castle on the background.

At one point I was bouncing my mormuska outside of the big rocks at the shore. Suddenly something much bigger dashed from the depths of the river and hit my bait. Luckily the fish did not make any sudden moves and after a quick fight I landed a Chub of almost one kilo. Not a bad fish with two meter long whip rod and a 0,14mm line! After that I had to leave back to our apartment because we had a bus to catch. Our next destination was another capital and after a one hours bus ride we reached Vienna, Austria. 

The Europen chub.

Sadly I had not time to fish at Vienna because we spend only one night there. Next day we travelled back to Budapest by bus, rented a car and headed to the biggest lake of the Central Europe, Lake Balaton. When we finally got to the south end of the lake I had a strange feeling at my right ankle. It was aching and swollen. When we looked it more closely we found two small holes from it. A snake bite! Now I remembered that I had felt some twinge and found out my ankle was bleeding when I was fishing at Bratislava. Well, we managed to find a local doctor who prescribed some antibiotics for me.

Was it one of these that bite me?

That small episode pretty much ruined my plans to go fishing to the lake Balaton or some of the canals and small rivers flowing to it. Well maybe next time. Instead we went to have some bath time to the town of Heviz. There’s a spa which is build by and on a thermal lake. The lake has a good population of fish too. I managed to catch couple of Western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) with my bare hands but as you know I’m only counting the species I’ve caught with a hook and line.

Couple of nights later my ankle felt much better (by the time we had returned back to Budapest) and my alarm clock was ringing again at 4.15 am. It was time to fish at the Danube river again. I chose to fish right under the Margit bridge right in the center of Budapest. I set up my bottom rig ready for a later use but started to find out if there was any life between the shore rocks. And I got an answer right away when a fish hit my mormuska from the second hole I tried. This was it. It was a goby of some kind but definitely NOT a Round goby. When I carried on I managed to catch two more of this new kind of gobies and of course few Round gobies too.

The scenery from my Budapest swim.

I also tried to fish with my bottom rig but it felt almost like a waste of time. When I used a sweetcorn as a bait I couldn’t get any bites and when I used a worm the rig barely hit the bottom before there was a Round goby hanging around at my hook.

These guys were everywhere.....

Afterwards I got a confirmation from Dr. Akos Harka from the Hungarian Ichthyological Society that all the three new gobies were Big head gobies (Ponticola kessleri) which is native species in the Danube river system. Big head goby was my species number 132. You can find my all time species list from here.

Big head goby (Ponticola kessleri).

Well, this was not a super species hunting fishing trip (and it was not supposed to be in the first place) but at least I caught one new species. The Danube river has a huge potential as a species hunting region and I’m pretty sure I will be back there some day.

This and that

It’s been over three months since my last post. After my trip to Sweden I have been fishing only at local waters. To save you all from a suffering, I'll keep my report as short as possible....

Ville with his second ever live baited winter Pike. 6kg sharp.

The winter was long and persistent so I made my last ice fishing trip to the Baltic at the 18^th of April. And what a trip it was. Totally I had 36 runs with my live baits from which I caught 14 pike. And the best part was the pike were decent size too.  Here’s a list of my six biggest pikes of the day: 7,2kg/6,7kg/6,5kg/6,45kg/5,55kg and 5,35kg. That was not a bad way to end the ice fishing season.

A fat lady on the way back home...

Two weeks passed by before I made my first open water attack. I decided to go after Ide. I caught few of them. Not any trophy ones but it was still fun to catch'em.

In the middle of May came our friends Daron and Darren from England to fish with Jarno and me. On the first day they went with Jarno to hunt some Vimba breams. Saddly I couldn't get day off from work so I missed this trip. All of them managed to catch at least couple of Vimbas so the trip was a success. 

On the next day we borrowed my uncles boat and headed to the Archipelago with a Whitefish on our minds. When we found the island (it was a "bit" foggy at the morning) it didn't took too long to catch our first Whitefish. Together we caught about 15 of them. Not a super good day but at least we had fun.

Daron and his first ever Whitefish.

Fishing is not always so serious....

Then came the last fishing day of their trip. This time our target species was an Ide. Again a species they haven't caught yet. The season was at it's end already but still they managed to catch two Ide each.

Darren was very pleased to catch an Ide.

Even I caught one....

In the change of the May and June my girlfriend travelled to Spain again. Of course I offered to give her a ride to the airport because that ment I had a chance to catch some Asp again. Jarno hopped on too and so we had 24 hours to hunt for Asps. My trip started very well when a good sized fish hit my Rapala lure after an hour of fishing.
After an longish fight Jarno scooped up my fish and then I just realized the size of the fish. It was by far my biggest Asp ever. A beautiful fish of 4,2 kilos.

What a nice fish!!

After that I managed to catch three more Asp though they were all small. For some reason Jarno failed to catch any........well he caught few Perch, a small Zander and this one.....

The one you really don't want to mess with.

After that trip and between those trips mentioned above I have made some shorter trips after different species. I don't have any goals what it comes with species hunt this year (all the new species are still welcomed of course) but it's still always nice to catch different species with different methods.

At this point I have caught 21 species from the nearby waters. One to mention is the first Round gobies from my home bay just couple of hundred meters from my home door....