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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
