REELax fishing charters (Sweden)

Hi all, once my new boat is fully fitted out i'll put it in the water & start my catch reports here. It looks like i'll be looking at pike to begin with & get onto some summer salmon later, today i've fitted 16 rod holders to the boat & got the big plotter/fishfinder up & running. I've had enough for today as it's blizzard conditions outside!! I'm keen but there's a limit :lol: Next will be the downriggers & trolling mast fittings, this is really going to be a belting boat.

Ok, back later when it stops snowing...

John.

nice one john wish i was flying round in that thing well hopefully i'll be able to get out in September and pay you a visit !

sounds like a good forum jaunt !!!!! looking forward to reading the catch reports i love trying different countries and types of fishing. :D

good man looking forward to see you and a few

Here's the result of a few hours fishing in Stockholm last Saturday, a friend was fishing with his mate & called me with the good news, the guy in the pic has fished this venue & blanked a couple of times but this beaut made up for it.... Bang on 4Kg

John.

thats a tiddler well done it fooking mahosive

didn't see this post John nice catch and Counting the days for our fishing trip

Everything is still good to go, i have my usual known spots & a few that i want to try out where i know BIG pike have been taken, looking forward to your trip over :)

John.

Hi all, i just had a lovely weeks fishing with Keith Elliot, Andy Nicholson & a local friend Ulf Olsson around the Archipelago outside of Stockholm, we fished for a mix of Pike & Sea Trout & caught both, but as the Pike were still spawning, that side of things was hard going.. Here are some pics from the trip, the photo's don't really do the islands justice as it is a really spectacular place.... check todays (Sunday) independent newspaper for a report by Keith on the trip...

























The two sea trout in the pictures were 2.3kg & 4 kg but on the last day Keith had a 5kg+ fish follow to the boat TWICE!!! frustrating but it's still out there

Cheers,

John.

Great pictures as usual John. That looks a fantastic place, very nice!

Here's what Keith wrote about his trip over....

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/fishing-lines-im-fresh-out-of-answers-to-the-great-swedish-sea-trout-mystery-820768.html

John.

By Keith Elliott
Sunday, 4 May 2008

On the weirdness scale, few angling experiences come close to catching fish where they really shouldn't live.

I was watching a huge shoal of tiddlers by the ferry jetty at Dalaro, a small, attractive town 25 miles from Stockholm. I assumed they were baby herring. In the interests of science, I bought a bread roll at the general store next to the ferry terminal, tied on a tiny hook and tried to catch one.

Turned out they weren't sea fish after all, but baby bleak, roach and bream – all fish we associate with fresh water.

Though the water here is really the Baltic Sea, it's sea in name only. You have to travel perhaps 60 miles west before it turns briny. So sea fishing means catching freshwater fish. I'm still coming to terms with catching pike among the seaweed, or pulling up an anchor and finding ragworms among the mud.

This is a fisherman's paradise. That odd mix of brackish water and rich feeding creates outsize pike, sea trout and salmon. (My guide, Ulf, has caught salmon to 60lb.) Early May is sea trout and pike heaven.

I'm here at the invitation of John Steele, a tough Carlisle-born former Navy diver who has spent the past three years guarding VIPs and convoys in Iraq. He's happy to talk about it, but has no plans to go back. He's been shot at too many times, watched too many friends die.

Fishing seems pretty tame after that, even if it is for sea trout that average 5lb and can weigh more than 30lb. This area is stocked annually (500,000 this year alone). So it should be easy. Trouble is, sea trout are twitchier than the annualSt Vitus school reunion.

I've never stalked deer, but sea trout must be the aquatic equivalent. Most UK seatrouting takes place in riversand at night, in the mistaken belief that you can surprise them. Fat chance.

Here, chasing this will-'o-the-wisp means fishing from boats and casting into bays. That makes it 10 times harder to sneak up on them. My companion, Andy Nicholson, said gloomily: "I reckon they hear us coming from so far away that they've already moved to the next island by the time we make our first cast." With 24,000 islands in easy distance, you move around a lot here.

Just when you're ready to say "That's it! I've had enough! To hell with sea trout!", your rod bends and a huge silver fish leaps into the air. But it's never easy.

John reckons a good day means catching six. Ulf, his best mate, has been fishing for sea trout for the past 25 years and still remembers a red-letter day of 15. The average is two or three. They may be whoppers, but you earn your fish.

For a lazy fisher like me, this is darned hard work. There must be an easier way. Andy and I have sat late into the night puzzling how to crack The Great Baltic Sea Trout Mystery (millions of fish, but where are the bodies?). It would baffle Miss Marple. We're trying to catch a fish that allegedly can't be caught in the sea. Except in this area of Sweden, it is.

Water temperature? Currents? Barometrics? Salinity? The right-coloured hat? We're no nearer the answer.

A good read John. He sounds like he enjoyed himself despite the hard fishing!

I'd love it. As I always say (and this could just be my way of keeping myself going on those hard day's!) "It's getting out there with your friends that counts", "catching a fish just makes the day perfect".

God you are so spoiled John, keep the posts comeing, realy good to read what your doing over there Love it!

my thoughts exactly slippy ...let's have a social

Not long now John and i will be out there what is it 5 weeks now ?