Another monster pike!

Hi guys,

Another weekend has been passing by and our first guests have now left Camp Dragsö for this time. Since we only had one group here this weekend both me and trainee Jakob took the chance to fish both Saturday and Sunday. Conditions didn't look to good to be honest. Saturday was very windy from north with +1 degree in the air and snow/rain was cooperating to pour down on us. In think wind measured up to 17m/s in squalls so it was tough fishing for sure and we gave up already after 4-5 hours. We managed to catch 20 pikes in shallow water of 0,4-2,0m and our top fish measured 92cm.

Sunday and conditions totally changed overnight. Wind direction had turned and was straight south by lunch time when we left Dragsö for some afternoon fishing session. Water level went down from being +25cm to -45cm in less than 24 hours which forced fish to move a bit outside the really shallow bays. Water temperature was also dropping from 5.0 - 6.5 degrees down to 2,5 - 4,5. This didn't matter for us, for sure!

I choosed a big bay with variating depths and drifted to see where the pikes seemed to be at the moment. It didn't take long until the first pike showed up and inhaled my Svartzonker McRubber. We found the key of the day and about an hour later I got a good strike over 3m of depth. The fish didn't fight good at first but soon enough started to pull line and stayed by the bottom. Jakob secured the beautiful lady in the net but it took us some time to realize that the fish might be over +10kgs. When I lifted her I said to Jakob that "Yes! This is a 10 kilo pike!". After some photos and measurements we summed up a 113cm pike with a weight of 11,3 kilos. Happy times!!

We continued on and caught pikes on almost every drift. Late afternoon I felt a good strike on great distance and immediately told Jakob "This is a good fish!". Directly this fish started to swim towards the boat and didn't stop until she just had a few meters left of line. With lots of energy left, she started to go crazy around the boat but soon enough this beauty was secured by Jakob in the net. This fish wasn't as fat as the previous monster so I decided to not weigh the fish. She measured 108cm though so for sure another good sized fish!

We ended up catching around 15 pikes and several more around 80-90cm so with conditions in mind this was a very good fishing trip! We caught fish on McRubber, McTail, Wolf Tail Jr & Mouse spinn fly during these days.

I receive a lot of questions at the moment regarding spawning. In my opinion spawning has not started yet. Maybe in a few places but so far I have seen no signs of spawning and water temp is not enough to break lose the sexy time yet.

Upcoming weekend we will be hosted by several skilled anglers from up north when Andy and his friends from Dalsland will go down south for some pike action. Hopefully fishing will be contiuously good!

// Daniel Wickman
   2015-03-24