Advent fishing

Hi guys,

New week and time for a new update in the blog. Since fishing season has comed to its end, I now have weekends off work. Therefore, I went out fishing last Sunday with Philip from Stinger Productions. Strong north/west winds, mostly sunny and a couple degrees in the air. We started fishing about 9.30 in the morning and this day we focused on some bays in the west part of the archipelago.

I must say that fishing started out very slow. During the first hour, only a couple of small pikes was caught by Philip and none by me. Soon enough, I also caught my first pike. Still a small one but always nice to break the zero point and skip the not so flattering word that you are given if you catch no pikes in a day, if you know what I mean...!

Soon enough I was hooked up again. This time it was a better fish that inhaled my Pig shad jr. A big head was shown in the surface very quickly, and with a firm gill grip the fish was secured. The fish measured just under the meter mark and she went crazy in the boat, leaving me with cuts in my fingers. For a second it looked like if I had put my fingers inside a meat cutter!

We continued on and experienced quite slow fishing. Some followers and small bites but nothing serious. At lunch time, we only had four pikes in the boat. Since sun is going down at 16:00, we only had a few more hours on the water. We picked a bay where the wind was pushing in and it didn't take long until a small pike was caught. This was just the start of a feeding frenzy (at least on my rod!). A couple of hours later we were up to 19 pikes in the boat and one more fat beauty of 95cm was caught. All pikes this time was caught in 1.0m of depth.

By the way, on Thursday we will announce the winner of our annual photo competition. All guests that have been visiting us during 2016 are welcome to send pictures from their stay to daniel@dragsosportfishing.se
The pictures can involve anything from pikes, boats, nature, food or maybe something crazy from your dinner barbeque on Dragsö? So please send me what you have, and take the chance to win a unique handmade lure by Jenzza Lures! Winner will be announced on Facebook on December 1st. And yes, you can compete with more than one picture!

At the moment I'm spending most time of my days with storing and giving the boats some well needed love. Since we have 20 boats now, plus the guide boat, it takes more than a month just to bring the boats up and making them ready for next season. As you might have seen in a previous post, many of the boats are getting new engines as well for next season. Really looking forward to it!

Later this week, or in the beginning of next week, I will post a season summary with many pictures and a long text. Hope you will like it.

If the weather wont get to bad, I will spend three days later this week on the water with good friends. Night temperatures will go down to -6 degrees so it will be ice in several bays upcoming weekend. Tough conditions but also the time to catch big mamas in the bays. We'll see if they are willing to bite!

// Daniel Wickman
   2016-11-29

Read More

Cold days and good news!

Hi guys,

A bit more than a week now since the last post in the blog and a lot has happened since then. Earlier this week winter came to Karlskrona with snow and some very cold nights. I was supposed to go out fishing last Tuesday with Philip but the evening before we decided not to, since weather forecast promised snow and minus degrees.

Luckily, we stayed home. The forecast was for once correct and almost ten centimeters of snow was falling. The rest of this week has continued to be cold. Not to much more snow or rain, but still cold night temperatures. Early this morning temperature was down to negative six degrees and some bays already have a thin layer of ice. Yesterday most bays held temperatures between 2,5-5 degrees.

Since season is coming to its end, we have been pulling up many of our boats for maintenance and winter storage already. Only a handful of boats is left in the water and several of these are rented at the moment. Today there is actually many boats out on the water since Karlskrona Pike Tournament (KPT) is arranged with approx 40 teams starting. Hard conditions since most of day will be no wind, a few negative degrees and sunny. It will be interesting to see what the teams can catch. Our colleague Willy is competing again with his team Karlskronafiske. Can they manage to win this competition as well? We will see soon!

I also have some great news to share with you regarding next season. A few days ago we signed a deal to replace eight of our boat engines until next season. A big investment for sure but we want to continue our work with offering a great product that we can be proud of. This is a big step in the right direction to maintain the quality of our products. This means that 40% of our boat fleet will have brand new engines, 40% will have engines used one or two seasons, and the last 20% is still of good functionality but older than two years. It's hard to complain about the boat fleet, it's massive and of great quality. Already very excited for spring season even though we have a few months left of this year.

Next week will be warmer again with day temperatures up to ten degrees so all ice and snow will disappear again. More anglers to come next weekend but I will be off work upcoming week. It's time for my annual autumn trip to Rügen in Germany. Big pike mamas is the target as always and let's see if we can find any this time! Since I'm off whole week there won't be any posts next week but as soon as I'm back it's time for more updates. Until then, take care and thank you for reading.

// Daniel Wickman
   2016-11-12

Read More

November starts good!

Hi guys!

Finally, November is here and cold temperatures outside is in my opinion very equal to good pike fishing possibilities. I must say that November is one of my favorite months for fishing in our area. Less boats on the water, a lot of fish in shallow waters with the chance to catch really big ones.

Last Friday I had a guided trip with a group of Swedish guys. Very strong winds from west and partly cloudy. We went far east to some big bays with some depths because water level was extremely low. Negative 65cm below normal more or less creates a new archipelago of the area and a lot of bays is not even possible to fish in during those difficult conditions.

At the first drift, it didn't take more than a few casts before the first fish was hooked. We drifted over 1,3-1,5m of depth with success. Pikes very coming up frequently and a few nice sized ones as well. The biggest pikes measured 101cm and approx 93cm. Only small/medium size lures was working well (less than 20cm).

Since I got reports from several other boats about slow fishing, I decided to stay in the same area whole day. It turned out to be a good choise since 38 pikes was landed. My friend Jakob also experienced slow fishing during the first half of Friday before they came to the same area. Within just a couple of hours they also landed many pikes before it was time to head back for the day. Their top fish was 102cm!

Overall, several boats had really low numbers last weekend. The water level continued to be very very low until Sunday and most of times this is equal to bad fishing. Fortunately, water level is back now and today we actually have +20cm over normal level. High water level is many times the opposite of low level when it comes to pikes willing to bite. Hopefully, all the anglers that will arrive today can have some fun out there during upcoming days. About 30 anglers will arrive today and a few more later this weekend. It's our last busy weekend of this season since the upcoming weeks have plenty of openings in the schedule. So it's not to late to experience great autumn fishing guys, book now! :-)

The day before yesterday I went out together with Björn who is the creator of Nettelbaits. We've been fishing together a couple of times before but only in really poor conditions. This time, we went out in good conditions. Strong winds from west, water level just about -10cm below normal and cloudy. I decided to go east again and explore some big bays. We began in the same area as where I was fishing last Friday and it took no longer than five minutes until the first pike was hooked. This was just the start of a long feeding frenzy.

The pikes was biting all day and we shared the strikes evenly between us. In a little more than six hours we managed to catch 55 pikes with several decent ones. The really big ladys were somewhere else this day but of course we were very satisfied anyway. Most pikes was caught on Nettel-laken 2 V2, Renz-Stein Beastly tail and Pig shad jr. All of them in motoroil/copper/brown colours.

Lastly, I also received a nice report from local angler Johan Månsson today. He was out yesterday in quite strong winds and obviously found a very good spot. A stunning fish of 111cm and 11,19 kilos was caught on a Big Bandit close to the reeds. A great fish and thank you once again for sharing this catch with us.

Now, let's hope for some more fishy activities during upcoming days!

// Daniel Wickman
   2016-11-03   

Read More