I hate winter!
Well, not in general, but as a fisherman I really do. For somebody who loves spin- and flyfishing this time of the year can be a really tough time. Especially this winter was a little different, since I moved from Germany to Norway last autumn and experienced the long and cold Norwegian winter for the very first time.
Thanks to the nordic weather every lake and stream in the area froze, but icefishing was not an option for me. The only close river which is staying ice-free the whole winter is the Vorma, but here the fishing season is closed from the 15.10 to the 31.1.. Great! Of course there is a reason for the closing of the season, the so called «mjøs-ørret» (mjøsa-trout). This kind of brown trout is living in Norway’s biggest lake, the Mjøsa, but migrates into the river Vorma to spawn. Just like seatrout or salmon these trout can achieve huge sizes and can be caught on their way to- and back from the spawning places.
Motivated of stories about huge «mjøs-ørret» I made my way to the river on the 1st February, just after the closed season ended. The conditions were typical: -4°C and snowfall, my motivation started to decrease as I made the first step out the house. As I arrived at the river I saw that I was at the right place: there were fresh tracks of boots in the deep snow, showing that I was not the only one having the idea to catch a trout just in the start of the season.
Later on I met the two fisherman who were responsible for the tracks and shared a fishing spot with them, one of them already caught a trout of about 3kg – I was out of words, having never seen such a huge trout before.
Anyways, I didn’t catch that a fish day, I didn’t even have bite. I tried again the weekend after, nothing happened. And the weekend after, as before not even a single bite. This kind of fishing is incredibly demotivating, you need a lot of patience to wait for your bite. I was about to stop trying as a friend yesterday asked me if we should go fishing – of course I agreed and we got on the way to the river. While driving there I told him that I didn’t even had a single bite this year and that we should not expect to catch a fish, but as we arrived at the river I realized that the conditions had changed. It got way warmer than it was in the last weeks, the snow finally started to melt! Maybe this would make the trout start to feed and hopefully attack our lures.
Like all the other times before i threw out my 40g heavy salmon spoon, let it sink to the bottom once, started to crank it in as slowly as possible without touching the bottom again, to avoid getting stuck and loosing the lure. While chatting with my buddy the hours passed by, cast after cast, loosing one lure after another.
Then, absolutely unexpected, halfway to the shore I felt a strike that almost gave me a heart attack! The strike came in quite heavy current and the fish gave its best to benefit from the current. I was fishing heavy pike gear, a rod with 100g casting weight, a size 4000 reel and 0.27 braided line – and felt absolutely powerless against this fish. I felt its heavy headshakes and everytime I managed to get in a few meters of line it went even further into the current again, an incredible fight! For the first time ever I was happy about the cold temperatures: if the water would have been 10°C warm, I would have had no chance against the trout.
After ca. 8 minutes i finally got the fish close to the shore and saw it for the first time – it was bigger than I even could have imagined, my legs began to shake. One or two minutes later I managed to grab the tail and get it out the water, I still don’t believe that I actually caught that fish!
I was so happy that I had company and my friend was there to take pictures, so this day and this fish will never be forgotten!
This experience again showed me that patience and endurance are extremely important if you want to catch such a fish. I fished day after day without having a single bite. To stay motivated over such a long time you have to bear some things in mind: The first point is trust in the gear, lure and technique you are using, you need to be convinced you’re doing it the completely right way! When fishing in winter you also need to wear enough warm clothes, so you can concentrate on fishing the whole time and not on your freezing hands. Take some hot chocolate, tea or coffee with you and take some time for breaks to focus again and find motivation to go on! For me it is really important to go fishing with a companion: the time without a bite passes faster while chatting with a buddy, apart from that you can try different techniques and lures to find out what the fish are reacting on.
But most important – to catch fish you need to go fishing! So get out there and make some casts!
Mathis Philipp