After a long time - actually too long time – with work and vacation, I finally got away for a fishing trip. Lasse and I planned to drift down Gudenåen while fly fishing for pikes. The weather was fine for this time of the year but this was a new part of the river and I was a bit reluctant about our chances as the current was quite strong. Such strong current is normally not the best choice for pikes. We had to take a lunch break untill something happened. Lasse got a pike that even if it was app. 6 pounds really pulled very hard. Later I caught a pike of similar size but then we had also gone into calmer water.

Then we arrived at a very calm part of the river and here we soon caught a few more pikes, but they were quite small. One of the pontoon on my boat was leaking and at this point I looked  like a boat refugee that would not make it, so in the end even if the river looked very good we stopped fishing and Lasse towed me to our final destination

Inge Rasmussen from Norway has found his stripping basket very useful when picking berries in the high mountains – a favourite leisure time activity in the late summer in Norway.

a pontoon trip with the Bombayfly guys to Æbelø. It was my first trip to this little island north of Fyn with a reputation for fantastic sea trout fishing at times. Unfortunately this was not one of the times though we had decent fishing but we certainly had a memorable trip.

Due to very low water we had to drag the pontoon boats for the first mile. For Søren this resulted in a pontoon with a 1 meter long slit in the outer sleeve so Søren had to use rope to keep the bladder in place. As seen this resulted in a rolled point look. 

Later Michael had a major break down as the frame on his pontoon boat without any warning collapsed and he went into deep water. He did not panic and Søren could help him ashore. Everything was wet including his new expensive digital reflex camera. The broken frame was taken to a marina by some boat fishermen and Michael continued the trip wade fishing in high spirit. Søren now took the opportunity to exchange his pontoons with Michaels but for some reason he still wanted to use one of his own pontoons. This made his pontoon boat look like something a cuban boat refugee would use to seek asylum in the states.

Besides from these bumps on the road we actually managed to fish and we did catch some sea trouts though not in big numbers and sizes. In the morning and during midday we got app. 10 sea trout – half of them were too small and the rest up to 45 cm. As we wanted to stay overnight everything was released and then we hoped for a fish in the evening for the barbecue.

Søren with the best fish on the trip -  a 59 cm sea trout. It was caught in the late afternoon when the tide was changing and apparently bigger fish came in.

We did se several seals and porpoises and it looked very nice at sunset.

Lasse brought a 49 cm fish and with Sørens fish there were plenty of food for a late night snack from the barbecue.

The next morning I woke up to a pontoon without much air so I had to wade fish in the very calm morning, which only produced a few small fish. After breakfast I managed to fix the hole and I could row back together with the group. We had some very nice days here even if the fishing was not at its best but the surroundings were beautiful and we had many problems and even more laughs so as Schwarzenegger says ” I´ll be back”

An evening trip wade fishing with Michael. After work we headed for Fuglsø which at times can be productive in the fall. Shortly after our arrival I hooked a sea trout at the end of the cast (you know 50 meters away ). It was an fine little fish but big enough to be a keeper and when it came in it spat out a sand eel.

Michael caught one trout below the minimum size and lost an OK fish. There were quite a lot of big garfish that jumped out of the water for 20 – 30 meters, a very spectacular sight.

A couple of hours at a part of Lilleåen that I have never visited before.. Another fisherman had started when I arrived but that was no problem as he was the only one and he gave me advice regarding the this stretch. I started up-stream and worked my way down but I did not see or hear anything untill I was almost back to the starting point where Bent  Andersen called for assistance. He had hooked a classic Lilleå sea trout and wanted help with the landing. I netted his fish and everything was fine except that he broke the rod during the landing, too bad. So I got some action in the end after all.

2.7 kg sea trout caught on a wobler by Bent Andersen.

Some fly fishers that like to wade extremely deep may experience water going in through the handle hole. This is normally no problem as the stomach and the wading belt blocks this hole when the stripping basket is in place. But if you want to block the handle hole it is quite simple as you just place a piece of gaffa tape across the hole. In order to avoid exposing the sticky part of the gaffa tape, you may place one on the inside and one piece on the outside of the basket. This is a simple trick that works very well.

Two evening trips wadefishing with Michael without much success in terms of caught sea trout but we got fresh air and experienced some interesting things naturwise.  On the first trip Michael got one garfish and a trot that was too small. Later after sunset I saw three very good sized trouts but I did not managed to get any. When we ate oursandwiches at the beach we heard splashing in the the water. We naturally looked for an explanation and found a porpoise hunting sea trout in app. 50 cm deep water. The porpoise moved around very aggressively while a sea trout literally jumped out of the water to save its life. It soon ended and I did not get a photo. We have never seen this before and we thought this was the danish version of killer whales grabbing sea lions from the beach as seen on Discovery channel

The next trip were also fishless apart from garfish but this time the weeds at the shore were filled with ladybirds. They were sitting on every straw in crowds. A guesstimating would say there were hundreds of thousands. We have never seen that many ladybirds in such a limited space, very impressive.

A pontoon boat trip with Henrik and Bjarne to Hirtshals. We started late afternoon but we were not happy with the transparency of the water, which was very milky near the coast and further out the visibility was between 1 meter to 1½ meter. This resulted in fishing without any hint of the structures on the bottom, which I think makes it less interesting. We did not feel or see anything in the afternoon but we had another go after a pizza and a beer.

In the evening things were more or less the same but Henrik managed to get two sea bass within five minutes but both were release as they were too small. Just after a beautiful sunset Henrik caught a nice sea bass on his white fly but that was it for the evening.

The next morning we fished from 1 hour before dawn until 8 AM but except for a very small coal fish we had no success. Henrik was the sea bass king of the trip and Bjarne and I had a lot of fresh air

Michael releasing a sea trout