The Alpine bullhead, number 40

Species number 40 from the Finnish waters (This year) was caught at July 21st on our way to Norway (stories from Norwegian waters coming later).

We stopped to River Muonionjoki when we spotted a nice looking rocky shoreline where we though might be a good place for Bullheads. Jarno caught couple of Minnows almost immediately he got his hook to the water. Soon he dropped his first bullhead and some ten minutes later I heard a loud YES from his direction. He had caught his first ever Alpine bullhead and mission was accomplished.

A Scenery from River Muonionjoki. As you can clearly see, we fished at the middle of the night. The picture has been taken at 4.15 AM.

Except I haven't seen even one fish yet. I tried a while more before I decided to move about hundret meters downstream to another spot. There was a really nice looking small and rocky branch current. From there it didn't took too long to catch a fish. It was a bullhead and a quick turn of the fish exposed its stripy pelvic fins. Alpine bullhead (Cottus poecilopus) was my 51st species ever caught from Finland and 113th species overall (yes, you read right, 113th. I have miscalculated in some point. Before this I thought I had already caught 113 species).

The Alpine bullhead with it's stripy pelvic fins.

Anyway, it was really nice to move on towards Norway with a another new species on the pocket....

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!