Summer to its end?

Well hello out there my fellow readers. As I wrote a couple of days ago, I had a few days off work this week and spent some hours both days on the water.

Personally, I've experienced the fishing to be a bit hard lately. Last two weeks hasn't been the best this year but maybe this is about to change from now. 3 days ago I went out for a little more than 3 hours. Conditions were okey with hard winds and south winds. Only one pike was kind enough to find interest in my lures so with decreased self esteem I went home to load my gear for upcoming day.

With the poor results in my mind, it took a little time before I actually went out. 5pm I made my first casts and I didn't have a single strike or any intention of pikes in the first hour and a half. After that the rush hour began. Moved to a shallow area with plenty of nice weed rushes and something happened, because pikes were crazy now! 14 pikes between 75-88cm came up in just 1,5 hours! All of them took a Mctail modified with bigtail. It should also be mentioned that water was gin clear so most strikes were visible from far distances as well! This kind of fishing is for sure addictive...

Plenty of vacancies upcoming weeks so for those of you who are thinking about visiting us it's possible most weeks still.

Temperatures continue to drop and in night time we only reach 14-16 degrees now. It starts to smell pike time, that's for sure!!

// Daniel Wickman
2013-08-16

 

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Autumn season is approaching

Sunday afternoon and I'm looking in my calendar and I find out that summer is more or less over by now. Officially, we are in fishing season now and our campsite is open until the 15th of October. A little more than 8 weeks of fishing is ahead of us with most guests arriving in the middle of September.

Every evening from now is starting to feel a little cold even though we still use shorts outside most days. Daytime temperatures has dropped a bit lately so these days we get about 18-23 degrees in daytime, which is approximately the same temperature as it is in the water. In the bay of Dragsö the temperature today is 22 degrees. As you might understand, this is not really preferable for the pikes but soon enough we expect to get better conditions for fishing. Last two weeks hasn't been to good... But better times to come!

For a whole week now we are getting strong winds from west/south-west. Today 9m/s in average and so it will be for the rest of the week. Squalls of up to 16m/s will be registered as well so for sure hard fishing conditions but this will bring good oxygen levels to the water. Hopefully this might result in a pike bonzana in 5-7 days. At least that's what I think!

Will be off work for a few days upcoming week so of course some time will be spent on water. Should be very interesting. Either the fishing will be very poor, but it could also be very good if you find the spots where pikes normally gather up together during rough weather conditions.

// Daniel Wickman
   2013-08-11

Sunsets can be very beutiful at Dragsö

But a day like this, You either stay home or go fishing!

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Pikesafari #7 2013

As I'm writing this summary, there has also become time to sum up this years total of all pikesafaris. Yesterday was the 7th and last pikesafari of this season and as every year we wasn't really fully booked. 16 anglers devided into 4 boats.

A little less than two days before this pikesafari the weathermens told us that we should get up to 65mm of rain during the day. With this fact in my mind, I realized that it was going to be a rainy safari this week. Fortunately, this forecast showed up to be very wrong and just small amounts of rain was falling during the morning and nothing at all in the evening.

This evening I wanted to go to some places that we havn't been visiting before on our pikesafaris. Our first place was west Haglö were we fished on 1-2,5m of depth. This place didn't deliver to good so after an hour we went a far way north of Dragsö to the bay of Skärva. At this place I immediately had a fish of approx 75cm but the fish escaped just by the boat.

We continued to have good amounts of contacts but just a few of them wanted to follow all the way into the boat. Two smaller pikes was landed by German guests Fiedler up to 57cm. We took some pictures of them anyway since we knew that fishing was tough today. Maybe these fish was going to be good enough?

Back at Dragsö we summed up this very last pikesafari and the numbers wasn't much to cheer for. Two boats came in with "pike virginity" and only a few ones in my and the 4th boat. In total we gathered 5 pikes and a perch. Lucky for the Germans, 57cm was the longest pike this evening and were rewarded with winner caps! They were so happy about their achievement and really got into pike fishing so they decided to rent a boat for themselves today!

So, with all the pikesafaris accomplished, we could sum up some interesting numbers.

In total this summer, we caught 152 pikes during our 7 pikesafaris. That is 30 pikes more than last year! The average winnerfish this season measured 77cm, compared with 2012 when this number was 74cm.

We had 185 guests following this season on our pikesafaris, which is a little lower number than last season when 196 guests joined us.

Numbers for geeks;

PIKESAFARI
               
        Participants            Pikes caught        Winner pike
1.             16                               12                       87cm
2.             20                               17                       67cm
3.             21                               36                       91cm
4.             36                               35                       101cm
5.             40                               41                       70cm
6.             36                                6                        65cm
7.             16                                5                        57cm

Today I'm posting some mixed pictures from this season of pikesafaris. Enjoy and have a nice weekend!


// Daniel Wickman
   2013-08-09

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Pikesafari #6 2013

Well hello all fishing enthusiasts. We have reached another weekend and the last really busy vacation weekend of the year here in Karlskrona. At the moment Karlskrona Archipelago Festival is beeing runned so a lot of people is visiting both us and Karlskrona at this date.

Yesterday we accomplished this summers sixth Pikesafari and we did it with 9 boats this time. 36 anglers in total including me and our substitute Stefan who joined in instead of David yesterday.

Weather conditions this safari was partly cloudy but more and more sun later in the evening. Wind was fighting hard this time though. Approx 7m/s in average and squalls up to 15m/s. With these facts in my mind, I picked an area east of Karlskrona city so that we could feel a bit wind protected since wind was forcing on from west/south-west. Islands Mjölnareholmen, Kalsholmen and Basareholmen was our staring point and we gathered up approx one hour later. Conditions were okey but obviosuly the pikes wasn't ready to dance...

Another thing worth to remember is that the every year returning "spaghetti weeds" has growed dramaticly during last 10 days. Some places is really hard to fish on at the moment if you don't choose lures who is possible to fish very shallow.

In my boat I had 3 young guys who tried their luck with different baits and I struggled to find something that could work aswell. It felt like we served a minor Nobel dinner but with no guests coming to the feast of food.

Second place of the evening was the whole area of Borgmästarfjärden. For those of you who ain't familiar with our area, this means we fished between Dragsö and Karlskrona city. A closed area with remarkably lower waves caused by the wind. This fact didn't help to much though since pikes continued to refuse our lures.

Back at Dragsö we could sum up a very low amount in total. Only 6 pikes was caught during the evening and the longest measured 65cm. I guess this was a time of fishing when pikes really were off feeding mode.

I will go home this evening and pray to the fishing gods so that the pikes will be more active next time. Because next week we are arranging this summers last pikesafari, and we hope to finish strong and go into the autumn fishing season with good spirit!

Cheers and stay fishy this weekend!

// Daniel Wickman
   2013-08-02

   

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