My fishing year 2014 recap

Hello again!

So now it's time to look at some photos of my last year's fishing. It was such a great year.

First of all, I got married with the most beautiful, caring and amazing woman in the world and we had a perfect day that I'll remember for the rest of my life.

Picture c Marko Viitanen 

As for the fishing, it was magnificent too. It was better than I'd have ever dreamed of but it wasn't easy. It required a lot of learning, patience and cold hands.

I got my first float tube early 2014 and two of my friends got boats so my ability to pike fish went up like a rocket. These float tubes are probably the best vessels to fly fish for pike in. I got some good fish from the boat, too but it was a lot tougher. At first in early March I went to all kinds of places to fish with my float tube. (Thanks mom for loaning your car.) I caught little to no fish, but seeing the nature wake up after the winter was amazing.

It was in the end of April when I decided to try fishing in the bays nearby my home. They are accessible by foot so it's cool to just jump into the waders, throw the float tube on my back, grab the rods and go. The fishing here is a bit on the urban side but it's still very quiet and relaxing. Back then, I didn't realize I had hit a very good spot.

I fished more than ever before and caught the largest number of pikes I'd ever caught in a year. The five biggest pikes (5 pikes over 100 cm/ 39 inches) I'd ever caught in my life all came last year too and the average size was over 85 cm / 33 inches which is very good in my liking.

This is of course possible only because I didn't fish lakes last year. Big  pikes have been very hard to catch on the lakes, for me at least.

There were some nice days for float tubing this spring.

My first bigger pike on the fly

Yellow and chartreuse fly with gold flash was a good performer for early spring pike.

93 cm/ 36,5 inches C&R

Big fish makes me happy!!

This fish was one of the few I caught from a boat last year. Thanks to my buddy Eero for taking me on board!

It's one of my biggest pikes, still thin 114 cm and 7,7 kg. It's 44,8 in/ 17 lbs C&R

Float tubing fun!

Pliers anyone?

10th of May was a good day. Only three fish caught, but this was the smallest. The other two were over 102 cm/ 40 in.

My biggest fish ever! 108 cm/ 42,5 in. It was very thick and heavy too. I didn't have a scale with me but I believe it was over 10 kg/ 22 lbs. C&R. I hope It's fine. This was also 10th of May!

This was a strong one. We had a memorable fight of over 10 minutes. 104 cm/ 40,8 in C&R.

Nice one!

My first pike on a popper! It was a blast! There's a marina 30 meters to the left with people watching. They thought I was crazy when I released this pike. 92 cm/ 36 in.

As pike fishing slowed down we jigged for pike-perch in August.

Unusual color scheme.

Typical September pike. Big, healthy and super strong. It was a stormy day with winds over 15m/sec. This one ate a big green fly with flashy silver sides.

Last year i took two small pikes for food. Other than that I always catch and release. Releasing is as much fun as catching in my opinion.

Thank you for your interest. Next post will be about some of my favorite flies, I think.

Tight lines!

-O

Tying video: Cheap Roach

This is a good baitfish imitation/ flash fly made from cheap materials.

Sometimes pike get crazy over these flashy flies.

Tying video: Easy pike fly

Hi!

I did my first tying video. Check it out! It is just a basic pike fly, simple but effective. I just love to tie pike flies 'cause I can just improvise and do what ever comes to my mind. I'll definitely make more of these tying videos!

What do you think? Can you help me make better videos? Please comment!

-Olli

Something about me, (The story of Hauki-Olli)

Hi, all my friends interested in pike fishing and welcome to my blog!

My name is Olli Alanko. I'm a pike fishing enthusiast from Helsinki, Finland. I've been fishing for all of my life. With my beloved dad, we went angling for barbs on a local stream and caught some good ones too. The river was also loaded with pike, so we spin fished for it in pools and other slower parts of the stream. Dad taught me a lot about nature, how to treat the environment responsibly. We practised catch & release.

It was before all that though when i got the "pike bite". I caught my first pike bobber fishing in a trench near our home. I had this rod made from a tree branch, if I remember correctly and the pike was around 1lb/0,5kg but it felt big then. That's a day I'll never forget, my perents even gave me a nickname Hauki-Olli (Olli the pike-catcher in english). After that I've been a pike fisherman. Of course I like to fish for other species too, but the pike strike just makes me so unbelievably happy.. I can't help it.

Novadays I mostly fish for pike on a fly in the archipelago near Helsinki, Porvoo and Turku. Pike gets on well in the brackish waters of Gulf of Finland and they grow huge here. I don't have a boat, or even a car, but I bought a float tube last winter and it opened a whole new world of fishing for me.

In the next post, I'll upload some photos and tell something about my last year of fishing. (Which was better than I could ever have imagined.)

Thanks for reading and welcome back soon.

Greetings

-Hauki-Olli