Recap 2012 Part One

Hello World.

I just sat around thinking about where to go fishing this year when I remember that I have actually not made one single blog post during 2012.

How is that?

Well, the answer would be none, I got no reason to justify it, but I will try to make up for it! So in order to do that I'll do a brief recap of the only fishing trip i did 2012.

The trip went to the island Vaeroy in northern Norway. I went back to Vidar at Sjybrygga as usual. But instead of going with my ordinary fishing buddies this was a suprise party for my dads 60th year birthday. So I decided to bring my cousin and his dad along for the trip, none of whom have fished in Norway before. We went in the beginning of August.

Me and my cousin took the car up from Stockholm two days earlier with all the fishing gear and food before my dad was supposed to be snagged unowkningly and brought to the airport. So we had enough time to get up to Vaeroy in time before their arrival. Me and my cousin unfortunately missed the ferry from Bodo to Vaeroy and was stuck for one entire day in Bodo. So when going to Vaeroy make sure you do NOT miss the Ferry. There is a new ferry 2013 that is supposed to be faster, go more frequently and take alot more cars, so everything is good there! The ferry still takes a long time, so this is something to consider, the helicopter option is more expensive but takes only 20-25 minutes when the ferry takes approximately 6 hours.

Since me and my cousin had missed the ferry we wanted to make up for lost fishing time when we arrived at Vaeroy with the Ferry. The weather was smooth and the ocean was like mirror when we arrived. We threw our gear into the bunks, brought the most important stuff and went straight out on the ocean. The fishing was great and it felt so nice to get out on the northern sea after almost a year. This year the ordinary boat I usually book was taken so I got one of the other new boats Vidar have invested in. It worked just as nice as before, since Vidar only have nice boats!

We got alot of fish during the night but at dawn I got something that felt heavy, I expected it to be a decent sized tail hooked cod or pollack. I was right about one thing, it was a cod but it was not hooked in the tail and it was big! really big!

Here I am with my grand prize, this is taken when it's right out of the ocean! Happy as a pup!!

Since we were tired from fishing all night we decided to head in to the harbour and see what the weight landed on, it landed on 33.5kg!! New PB for me! The weight is alot for a cod caught in the summer. The cod are quite slim during summer time, this cod would most likely have weighed 40+ if it was caught during the skrei season around march-april.

My old record on cod was 28.5kg and that was during Skrei season (this is when the big arctic cod comes from the north and swims along the coast south), they eat everything they can find and therefor also weigh alot more than they usually do. As you can see below it was heavy to lift!!

Huff & Puff!

We arrived at the harbour just as the other fishing teams at the camp was about to hit the ocean. We hurried to our beds to try and catch a few well earned hours of sleep before our dad's arrival.

The cod was caught using my favourite rod, the Synit Deepshot 350 and my JM PE5 reel. The jig was a River2Sea Sea Rock 500g, this is my favourite jig for cod/halibut since I prefer metal jigs nowdays over soft jigs. Unfortunately River2Sea no longer sells these amazing jigs at 500g but the biggest one they sell now only being 300g. :/. 

So with my dad in the car without any idea where he was going, my cousins dad brought him to the airport, much to his suprise the destination was far up in northern Norway. They had to change flights two times to get to Bodo in Norway but it went fast, the flights does not take alot of time. They arrived late at Bodo so I had set them up for the night at a nice hotel by the marina in Bodo. Early the next day, they went by helicopter from Bodo - Vaeroy in mere 25 minutes.

After a few hours of sleep we met them at the helicopter pad and went straight to our fully loaded boat and out on the ocean! They were all eager to get the jigs in the water.

Here we are all set and ready to go, as you can see, perfect weather. My cousins dad to the left, me in the middle and my dad on the right. My cousin is the photographer. You can see him sitting in his favourite spot in the front of the boat below!

I will continue the story later this week with more pictures.....