The trip towards Sjybrygga on Vaeroy (
www.sjybryggga.no) began on 2011.04.07 and we took the car early, around 9 am to make sure we had a good margin to reach the ferry in time. Since none of us had made this trip before we were uncertain of the quality of the road and if there was going to be alot of snow in the mountain pass between Sweden and Norway. My previous experiences has been that the roads are bad.
The car trip went suprisingly fast and it took us just about 15-17 hours to reach Bodö which was alot faster than we had expected. We took the road to Skellefteå and then of towards the west and Norway.
Since the whole car trip went as fast as it did we ended up in Bodö in the middle of the night. We tried to find a car space where we could sleep for a few hours, it was terrible to try to sleep in the car and the sun came up to early! I woke up in the car with fog on all sidewindows and still felt as tired as I was when falling asleep, if not worse..
I had to face the fact that the clock was around 5 am in the morning and the ferry did not leave until 15.00, what can you possible do in bodö until 15.00???
The simple answer was nothing..We really did try our best to entertain ourselves.
The day started of by us taking the car on the "tourist route" going south of Bodö, it was a lovely scenery and you did get to see the maelstrom in Saltströmmen aswell, its especially beautiful this time of year when all the mountain tops are white..We got some if on film for you guys to see later on.
Then we had a 2 hour stop in the parking lot of a Shell gas station eating breakfast..highlight of the day, and then we trolled a shopping mall for a few hours, enoyed the free internet of a espresso house and I think we walked the entire city of Bodö a few times over during the day. The highlights was the fishing shop in Bodö, despite the normally crazy high prices in Norway it had good prices and a very good supply of fishing gear. So if you forgot to buy something before the trip head to it and stock up. It's close to the harbour. I can also recommend a walk in the harbour looking at the ocean and feeling the nice smell of tar in the air.
So a tip of advice, do not exceed ur margin when going to take the ferry in Bodö! Try to cut it closer and you won't go crazy like we did.
I will write a city guide to Bodö when I get more time off! :D
Anyways.. lets fast forward to the ferry!
Oh the ferry, it's a nice ferry and it is easy to get a spot to sleep aswell, the downside is it took us 7.5 hours to get 88km out to the island of Vaeroy. If you can´t sleep I can let you in on a secret if you sit on the second floor there is a wifi broadband that is unprotected that you can surf on, I believe it belongs to the printserver of the boat. Also there is a long queu to the ferry so prebook!
The ferrys are almost always late due to all the hassle when unloading the cars/trucks at Röst before you head to Vaeroy. I guess it can go faster at times but for us it took a really long time.
I just wanted to let you guys get a "feel" for the trip up...It feels insanely long when you are filled of eager to fish, you guys know what I mean.
Vidar, the camp owner met us up at the ferry and we followed him to the fishing camp. It was evening and we were all really tired. We basically parked the car and went directly to sleep without either noticing how it looked around the fishing camp...
It was a totally other thing to wake up! I woke up to look out of the windows and see the spikey mountain tops of Vaeroy surround the big fishing harbour, a small mist surrounded the tops. There was classic fishing boats all over the docks. Right outside the window I could also see our own fishing dock with our boat , fueled up and ready to go. It was a Sea Pro 206CC with a 150HP 2 stroke, Yamaha engine. We had plotter with built in sonar, it's being replaced by a separate sonar and standalone plotter later on in the summer.
Vidar had also put in a drift anchor and safety rockets incase of emergency. This is something we have never experienced on any previous camps.
We knew we were alone in the entire house and started to look around. It's amazing. Two floors, the lower one being fully renovated with new furniture, wallpapers etc. We had all got our seperate rooms since we were the only ones there. But there is three beds in each room. There is two kitchens in the building and several sleeping quarters. There is also a big living room on both floors and you have several toilets and a dryer being built for the survival suits outside of entrance.
Saturday
We were eager to get out on the sea so we made some breakfast and waited for Vidar to come and give us the keys to the boat and give us the run through of the camp. He came just as promised early in the morning. The weather was very rough on saturday and we had winds up to around 13-14m/s with clouds and rain. So we knew we were not starting out under any good circumstances. I was a bit worried since both my friends I had taken with me on this trip had never fished on open water before and both are novice fisherman that has never caught anything above 11lb, I knew the weather can be a very dissapointing factor when fishing up in Norweig so that is why I booked 7 days, that usually ensures you to get a few decent fishing days out of your trip.
We took the boat and moved slowly through the stormy waters to the southern tip of Vaeroy,the winds stopped us from going anywhere and we stayed inside the bay of måskens the entire day trying to get some halibut. The area is supposed to have quite a few smaller ones, we did have some bites but we were empty handed.
During the afternoon the winds loosened up a bit and we took the boat east and decided to fish south of the lighthouse since it was close to harbour. Vidar had given us the tip that there was a lot of cod there at the moment. We parked the boat on around 130 meters of depth not even close to any ground so we did'nt expect any good fishing, the sonar was empty aswell.
But as the first jig closed on the bottom we got hit right away. We had tripple hits, double hits, we had a win win situation. It was impossible to go to the bottom without getting a hit. The sun came up and we had a really good evening of our first fishing night. The cod was'nt very large, average was 11lb - 22lb, biggest one about 30lb. So the trip was saved, all my friends caught bigger fish than they had ever before. In about 1.5 hours we filled all of the loading cargo in the boat with fish and headed home, took care of the fish, ate dinner drank some beer and blackened out exhausted.
Sunday
Again, we had heavy winds from the South and decided to try and fish up on the northern side of Vaeroy to get away from the wind. We took the boat over near Nordflakken but the winds followed us even there and we kept trying to fish for halibut the entire day with nothing. The winds got even stronger at the end of the day around 13-15m/s. One of our team members got to wet and started to freeze so we headed in and let him off. Then the two of us went back to the same spot as yesterday and took some cod up for the evening dinner.
Monday
The winds was only about 8 m/s in the morning when we woke up hopeful. We took the boat and speeded out towards the shallow ground tips far south of Vaeroy. Without the wind screwing up your trip it took us just about 15 minutes from the harbour until we were out. We had not fished in that area before but lay a drift on Grunnaregga and drifted north west. This area is know for big cod and during summer alot of big coalfish aswell. We all got fish on our first drop down and the size was ALOT bigger in this area. I do not think we got any fish below 23lb and alot around 33lb with a top fish on 44lb and some just below that. We also managed to get two coalfish that gave up a very nice fight even though they were just weighted around 22lb. It "almost" got boring fishing cod since they bite on whatever you cast in and as soon as it's close to the bottom. During the afternoon we headed in towards land and finished with some halibut fishing, had a few bites with none landed again.
a picture of some nice cod we got this day.
Tuesday
We headed back out to the grounds south of Vaeroy, winds was still about 8-10 m/s and we had great confidence in the boat taking our previous very stormy days into consideration. The day started off even better than yesterday and in about 2 hours we had already landed 250kg+ (550lb+)of fish. We got a very big amount of fish around 37lb - 44lb with the top fish this day being MINE! :D It is the cod from the picture in my previous posts on 60lb bled out, most likely around 61lb if I would not have let it bled out. However he put up a good fight the first couple of meters then became a total dead weight. I caught it on my Synit deepshot 150 which is a very light rod, it was an amazing feeling taking such big fish with such light tackle. So easy to work the jigs using a rod like Synit. I can feel the jigs every movement.
Here it is on another picture laying beside the other big cod we got this day. We only kept some of the bigger one, less hassle when we come into harbour! It looks very small because there is nothing in comparison but you can see it's big if you look at its head.
Afternoon we were totally fed up with cod fishing, we had already lost a few ones that felt bigger than my record fish. However we did'nt feel we had to pull one up above 66lb even though it was 100% possible. But there is not much challenge to it, I could most likely mount a banana shell with a hook and they would bite, or a spoon..or whatever that sinks.
When the fishing is like this it's more about luck who catches the biggest fish than skill. We ended the day fishing for halibut again, had some nice bites this time but we did not manage to hook em properly.
We were quite certain we were not going back out for more cod. We gave most of our fish to Vidar since he works part time as commercial fisherman and part time as camp owner. We kept a few big ones, I think Vidar took care of around 150kg (330lb) fish in the same time we took care of around 5 big ones...There is a difference between filleting and filleting and we were three and he was only one.
This day was going to be a day to remember fo the rest of our lives we had an amazing day on the ocean.
Wednesday
Vidar called me early since he was out on the ocean doing his daily work, he said he had gotten a coal fish on about 35lb and that he thought there was more around. This was out near the grounds where we had been fishing on for the last two days. We all know how much fighting power these coal fish has compared to the cod so we decided to try it out. This is not the best season for it, the best season is around August - September. You catch them easily by jigging fast, mechanical jigging works great. I think they act alot like kingfish or other fish that love fast moving food. However we got none out there and if we stayed even two seconds near the bottom we had a cod on the hook. We let the cod back in this day and headed back for some halibut fishing closer to land.
We got about three small halibuts up to the boat following the bait and with our first one landed :D, haha, it was tiny. But we felt happy to finnaly being able to touch one. We released it ofcourse. This area around Grundflaken seems very productive. We all decided that this has been the most productive area that we have tried sofar and we decided we had to go back here to fish atleast one more time before leaving Vaeroy. Since we did'nt land any big fish today, we had no fish to take care of and that felt good. Just come home and sit down and relax and enjoy the sound of a beer can opening and have the evening off.
Thursday
The morning looked calm and sunny and we thought we were going to have a pleasent fishing day ahead of us. We had already decided before that we were going to fish for halibut but were uncertain if we were going to try Nordflakken, north of the island or go back to where we fished yesterday with somewhat success. We also knew that the weather was going to turn for the worse during the day to culminate in a storm tomorrow.
For that reason we decided we will go to Nordflakken today and fish near land tomorrow due to the storm. Nordflakken is where they caught a 445lb halibut 2008 at very shallow water, it was the WR for atlantic halibut caught on pole for about a year before it was beaten.
Nordflakken is a large sandy area that goes on depths between 5m - 20m and is supposed to be one of the best places to fish halibut on around Vaeroy.
After speaking to Vidar about his experiences catching halibut around that area he said he usually fish using a herring connected with two hooks and a sinker. He drags the sinker in the bottom, since its basically all sand and keeps the bait close to bottom the whole time.
Vidar has also managed to get around 500kg of herring for his guests into his freezer so they can use it to fish for halibut.
I tried this the whole day without a single bite, on the other hand my friends using jigs did'nt have any luck either. The weather was nice for about two hours before the storm started coming, hail and rain and the winds caught up quickly and it made it hard for us to fish properly due to the quick drift. We did continue to fish the whole day unwilling to give up, we had perhaps two single bites the whole day with no hookups, it lowered our spirits since we had only one day left to fish and we knew the weather to be even worse tomorrow. We had been quite sure that we were going to land a halibut during the trip but we were getting more and more uncertain if we were actually going to. We got home a little earlier than usual and enjoyed it having a feast of anythin we could find that did not taste fish! We had a huge omelette in oven with tomatoes, salami and bacon and parmegano cheese ont he top, then we had a nice dip with garlic and raw peeled carrot sticks as second dish and finnaly home made lemon ice cream as the last dish. It was a feast to remember and suddenly tomorrow did'nt feel all that bad.
Friday
Our last day, our last chance to get that one halibut we had tried to get during the trip. We had set our alarms earlier than usual, me being anxious as always woke up before the alarm set of. I prepared the usual, our oven baked ciabattas we always eat as dinner on the ocean and I cooked eggs for all of us and prepared the coffee. Everyone was soar from our entire week of fishing and going up was quite hard. We were out on the ocean alot earlier than usual to enjoy the "somewhat" calmer waters during the morning. The water was anything from calm though, we had alot of winds around 12-13m/s and high seas. We took the boat south to Grundflakken where we fished during wednesday afternoon with success, we went quite far out so we would have a good long drift towards land. The waves never feel that bad when you finnaly turn of the engine and let the drift anchor point the front of the boat towards the waves making it feel safe and calmer.
I had already decided before we went out that with this heavy wind I was going to fish using a heavy metal jig to be able to have any control of my contact with the bottom which is very important when fishing for halibut. On this perticular jig about one year ago I had a halibut bite that I lost to me having to much initial break on the reel and the line cut in and broke. It had proven to me before and this was also the one I got the small one I landed one on Wednesday. The jig is a River2Sea Sea rock 500g jig using my favourite supersharp single circular hook, Owner Super Mutu size 10 with swivel,on the bottom of the jig, these are expensive but worth every penny. I rig it using my homemade assist hooks in the top going around half the jig down, mounted with a JM monster hook size 10 and 300pound kevlar cord. The way to fish halibut that has worked on me every single trip is some heavy bounces of the jig on the bottom then an uncosistent jigging up towards the surface. I go all the way up then repeat. The bites always come quite fare up near the surface. The jigs do get worn out from all the beating in the bottom but if you got quality jigs they manage without any problems.
On our first drift over rocky and sandy bottom with about 40-45 meters of depth, I felt that something touched my jig on the way up. I stopped, let the jig just float still for a moment. Nothing happened and I made one more movement of the jig up towards the surface. I felt it right away, about 15 meters from the surface there is no bottom. I got hooked and it felt like I was stuck to the bottom. I was getting no line at all. The fish figured out it was hooked up and took off towards the bottom as they always do. I yelled out to the others, HALIBUT!
I was loosing line fast until it stopped and I had to quickly try and pull it up from the bottom not allowing it to rest. My new JM reel PE5, mounted with sunline 90lb (depth colored) and Synit deepshot 350 rod proved to be better than I ever hoped for. Having a leverdrag is so convenient towards using a star drag. I know it's individual but for me it felt great. Afraid to do the same mistake I did a year ago I started out with quite low gear slowly raising it to avoid the line cutting in. As soon as the gear got heavier the fish started to tire and I was getting line in. He was heavy to lift up but was coming towards the boat. He did a few more rushes but overall I felt I was winning..
After around 10-12 minutes we could glance something at the surface, It looked quite big and I felt happy to see it coming. My two friends on the boat took everything so calmly and took care of the fish and landed it without any problems. The fish seemed exhausted when coming up. I do not know if I should thank my new rod and reel or that the waters are quite cold. But the halibut was beautiful and for me.. The third time is the charm, I have lost two big ones previously. One on every trip. This time I won. This made us all feel enlightened and since the weather was as bad as it was we decided to fish until noon and then head back towards harbour and pack and taking it calm the rest of the day until our long journey towards home began. At harbour the halibut was weighted to 77lb (35kg) bled out and with empty stomach, it was measured to 150cm (4,9 feet), a great catch and it was the perfect ending to this amazing trip.
If I were to give out a grade to the camp it would be a 5/5 counting Vidar. His prices are lower than most other fishing camps and the equipment and boats he has is of alot higher quality than most camps in Norweig. It is an adventure fishing in harsh waters, and on the open ocean where anything can happen. When fishing in Norweig there is nothing saying it can't be that world record halibut taking ur jig/lure. I can recommend this to all foreign people ever thinking of fishing in Norweig. Vidars home page is (http://www.sjybrygga.no) if you want it translated using google translate follow this link,
sjybrygga. This was my first time visiting sjybrygga and far from the last time. Vidar even gives you a vacuum packer to take care of your fish so that you can get it as fresh as possible with you home. Our trip home felt fast and everything went as smooth as it can be.
To fish in Norweig you can usually fish with a guide or you just hire the boat and fish on ur own. I know that in other countries it's usually a chartered boat with a captain but here you just hire the boat and on you are on ur own.
This was my trip report from an amazing trip where everyone broke their old records and where you can actually relate to the old man and sea with rough storms and oceans roaring at you where anything can happen. Fishing around high mountain tops coming out of the oceans surrounded by a swirl of mist at all times make you wonder there is still wild places like this able to take your breath away. I have alot of movie material from the trip and also a big amount of pictures but I will try and post it later on.
Thank you for listening.
/Marcus
