A late spring update

Wow, a season goes fast. Really fast. Just realized our blog was last updated before the ice melted away in the middle of March. Shame on me! But! My excuse is that many of you has hired me as a guide so many days has been spent on water during the whole spring. 

However, here and now we're soon to say hi to June in the calendar. That means spring season is more or less finished soon. It's been a strange season in many ways. Not every year we experience ice in the archipelago but this year we were forced to stay away from fishing from mid January to mid March. Ice got so thick that locals explored the whole archipelago ice skating between the islands and also between the city and Dragsö. Cool but strange.

The first day that was possible to fish again I went out with my friend Philip. A very successful day with 45 pikes caught and a beast on top measuring 110cm and 10,8 kilos for Philip. The following guide days resulted in fantastic days with 38, 40, 52, 48 pikes caught. However, since the ice got away late this year, the window of pre spawn fishing was very short. Less than two weeks of fishing before we clearly had the first signs of spawning pikes and our numbers decreased dramatically.

In the middle of April we once again had a couple of good days with 19 + 25 pikes caught. The following weeks was once again rather slow, probably since more or less whole April and May was very cold. Pikes normally carry small leeches in the winter season due to inactivity. This year we still caught pikes carying these leeches in the middle of May. A clear sign of inactivity.

When we finally got some warmer days in the middle of May, pikes immediately got more active and just in time for a hectic guiding period. Full day trips from middle of May for myself resulted in 21, 35, 18, 17, 19 pikes caught. 

A normal year without Covid19 we welcome fishing guests from between 15-20 different countries. This spring I estimate that 95% of our fishing guests came from Sweden. A few groups from Denmark and Poland visited us but also a couple groups struggled their way through Europe from Italy and Netherlands. Far from being as busy as we normally get in April/May. Fortunately, guiding trips was even more frequent than a normal year this spring and the summer looks out to be great with most cabins booked the whole summer. Most likely we will also experience a good autumn season again when restrictions lifts. 

During this spring, our Standard cabins has been fully renovated. They're now equipped with both cold/hot water, half of them as 3-bed units and half of them as 4-bed units. They also have floor heating and comfy beds!

We wish you all a warm and healthy summer and hope to see you at Dragsö Sportfishing anytime soon!

// Daniel Wickman
   2021-05-30   

Read More

Ice age

Strange times continues with a virus that refuses to let go of the world. For obvious reasons we lost or rescheduled lots of reservations, especially our guests from abroad who couldn't visit Sweden last year. So far this year, the situation isn't much better and we can see that many guests from other countries are waiting with their fishing plans rather than making reservations. We hope to say good bye to this virus soon and choose to stay positive and hope that the vaccines will be effective!

Karlskrona has experienced a very cold period now for a month or so. Many nights with -10 or more and day temperatures close to be that cold as well. Ice has now been covering most bays for at least a month and actually, for the first time in my soon ten years at Dragsö, ice is actually covering more or less the whole archipelago. Locals were ice skating from the city of Karlskrona to the big islands Hasslö/Aspö just a few days ago! Around Dragsö we estimate the ice to be 15-20cm thick at the moment. Pikes are for sure getting a well needed "vacation" from baits, cormorants, seals and industrial fishing... 

Perhaps we have seen the last days of winter now in our area. Right now we experience sun, 5 degrees and melting snow. Snow? Yeah we got a hell load of it a couple of weeks ago with approx 25cm in a day, plus many more days with snow as well. The whole city of Karlskrona felt like a city located far north in Sweden for a while. This doesn't happen every year and I have to say, I enjoyed it! 

Currently, lots of different projects are going on at the camp. All of our four-bed cabins are being reconstructed, a new service house is being built, many new camping pitches are taking place. Just to mention a few of the projects going on. 

Forecast is now looking a bit more promising for us fishing enthusiasts. Day temperatures in the two week forecast between 5-8 degrees will have its impact on the ice. However, night temperatures still show about 0 or below that so most likely it will still be at least three more weeks until it's realistic to see the first boats enter the water at our camp. We'll just have to wait and see but we hope to do some fishing in the later part of March.

First days in January offered open water before the ice age started. I managed to go out two times with friends and I can't complain about our results. First fishing day of the year resulted in my first meter plus pike caught and the next day we had a 90cm in the boat. Guess if I (WE) are looking forward to season 2021 :-)

Until open waters appear, stay safe and healthy. Hope to see you at our camp sometime this year!

// Daniel Wickman
   2020-02-22

Read More

A season finale

 A quick look at the calendar tells that we're already at 19th of November. Most days it certainly not feels like it. Both because weather is still warm for the time beeing, today 11 degrees, but also because a short autumn season felt a little shorter this year. Gladly, we were fully booked for many weekends this autumn but now in November we only see single or at least only couple of groups each weekend.

With 19 boats in our fleet, we still have several weeks left in front of us with boat cleaning and preparations to get the boats ready for spring season 2021. Also, several other interesting works is underway on the camp right now. All of our standard cabins will be facing a complete make over shortly. Four of the cabins will be converted to three bed cabins while the remaining five Standard cabins will stay to be four-bed cabins. 

Furthermore, we continue with a lot of ground works to improve and expand the camping ground even more. A natural step to meet the increasing interest for camping. We're also building a brand new extension to our eastern service building with more toilets, showers etc. Many of the cabins are undergoing paint jobs and other small upgrades. Undergound internet cables are being replaced to improve our available wifi network for our guests. Simply, the camp itself might be calm with low numbers of visitors, but behind the scenes we're doing lots of stuff to be ready for both fishing season and camping season next year.

When it comes to fishing, I've experienced a very good October and start of November. Lots of fish caught and almost every guide trip has resulted in really good numbers of pike. At the same time I realize that spending lots of time on the water this autumn has been a huge advantage compared with the results I've heard from several rental boats. When you find the key depths, baits etc very good numbers has been reached. However, if you go out with a blank mind and not to much knowledge of where the pikes has been caught lately, it might have felt very difficult at times this autumn. Many of my day trips in October reached amounts between 40-70 pikes in a day but as always, there's also been days with more normal numbers between 15-20 pikes as well.

Motor Marin Pike Open was arranged 7th of November and I joined in for the first time. I teamed up with Jörgen and Martin as Team Ram Mounts Nordic. With 52 very good fishing teams on the starting list we knew it was going to be tough to reach a good position this day. However, we had a plan we believed in and even though it was difficult fishing this day, we managed to snatch a third place with 268cm on our big three. The winning team "Pajkarna 2" won without competition this day as they reached impressive 301cm on their three longest pikes. 

Did you visit us this year? In that case, did you perhaps take some nice pictures during your stay at Camp Dragsö Sportfishing? Then please share them with us at info@dragso.se Our photo competition ends at 27th of November and you have the chance to win a guided trip (value 3800 SEK) or gift vouchers. Winners to be announced at our Facebook page on December 1st. 

Stay healthy and if you plan to visit us next year, some popular weekends are already filling up so don't hesitate to long with a reservation. I will do my best to get rid of corona in our region until then :-) 

// Daniel Wickman
   2020-11-19 

Read More

A mid October update

I was just about to start this text with a fact that time is flying away. However, I realized that I've already mentioned this in many of my latest posts this year. Still, nothing has changed regarding time. Because we're now in the middle of a busy fishing season once again and gladly we welcome many fishing guests this autumn. Time's therefore not a thing I've got plenty of these days. But I'm not complaining. This is perhaps the funniest part of the year to work!

As all of you know, last spring was a very special one. For our business it was for sure a special one to. So many of you had reservations for spring season and we were looking forward to welcome each and everyone of you but instead we filled our days with answering tons of e-mails and worried phone calls about this Covid-19 issue. Fortunately, most of you were able to reschedule reservations to a later date and many of you have already visited us this autumn instead.

Every weekend for about a month now has been more or less fully booked regarding our fishing packages. Great interest and fortunately many of you has experienced good fishing while visiting us. Same goes for many of the booked guide trips. Amounts of fish caught has been great on many of the tours, like 55 pikes caught last Saturday for example. 

Blekinge Pike Festival was arranged as usual in the last weekend of September. About 75 teams competed plus many individual competitors over two days. Again I was competing with Team Ram Mounts, like last year. In 2019 we ended 2nd place but we were in the lead until the last hours that time. Fortunately for us, we got our revenge this year as we finished on 1st place with a total top five of 472cm. I fished with Jörgen Lind and Gabriel Claesson and we had lots of fun! A total of 80 pikes over two days and our biggest pikes was 102,98,91,91,90cm. Great success!

Upcoming weekends will also be busy ones with most of our cabins and boats booked for anglers. Many more guide trips are on my schedule so hopefully we can continue to catch good size and numbers of pike!

Remember that we're offering boats until the end of November so still there's time to come and experience the wonderful archipelago this year. We also accept reservations for 2021 already and some of the popular spring weekends are acutally filling up quite fast so don't wait to long to avoid disappiontment. 

Here's some pictures from this autumn so far!

// Daniel Wickman
   2020-10-13

Read More