On a Scouting Trip

The final event of the season 2012 in Kurre Cup is held on Wed 15th. The competition area consists of the waters nearby Vaasa including Gerby and Västervik region and the sea lane area where the borderline goes along the edges of the Sundom archipelago. The area is fairly unknown to me so I decided to make a scouting trip a few days before the competition with Eki to maybe find some decent areas to fish. Unfortunately we only had a limited amount of time so finding the fish didn't seem like an easy task.

The weather was beautiful, thus finding the fish would truly be a challenge. Warm and sunny with mild wind. Nevertheless we tried to be optimistic and hold our confidence high.

We arrived to the first area which looked like it has potential. I steered the boat so that it would drift alongside the reef and we could fish the area efficiently. We tried our best to go through every rock, weed and reed to find some fish but it wasn't easy. After some twenty casts Eki caught his first, a small pike under a kilo. I had a bite too but the fish pulled itself loose. The area wasn't convincing at all considering our success in the coming competition, for we had no other contacts with the fish there. However we decided to come there on Wednesday after all.

Not a bad weather for trolling.

We continued our scouting near a tip where there was deep water close by. Our tactics were the same as before, drifting with the wind and efficient fishing. We caught some perch in a fast pace but there were no pikes around. In the competition the fish allowed are pike, perch and ide, but we're going for the pikes of course because they are generally bigger. This wasn't a very convincing place either.

We still went through several different places with varying features. Shallow and deep bays, rockpiles in open water, wide shallows and such. We also tried some trolling along some underwater banks but the fish were really hard to catch, for even though we did all we could do and only caught a few small pikes and around ten perch. Eventually our limited time ran out and we headed towards home admiring the glaring sunset.

Our scouting trip came out to be as bad as we were afraid it would be. We managed to stay positive however. After all, the weather was wonderful and it's always refreshing to be at sea. Maybe this bad scouting trip will mean the competition day will turn out fine? Who knows, we'll see how it goes on Wednesday.

Flat out on the sea lane.