In the meantime, Lehar and I took part in the spinning fishing World Championship, and together with training it took quite a lot of time, practically the whole month. Aside from that, I haven’t really had time to go fishing just for fun, but I did manage to go pike hunting on small lakes a couple of times.
I’d say the catches have been quite successful. I was looking for bigger pike in deeper waters using the Lowrance Active Target system (a LIVE transducer that shows fish movement in real time).
On the first day, my friend and I caught several pike weighing 3–4 kg, and a couple of bigger ones got away. On the second day, I went out alone, and that fishing session was even more successful. The biggest pike that day weighed 6.3 and 6.7 kg, plus one around 5 kg and several 3–4 kg pike.
The last time, the pike activity was not great; most of them didn’t react to the lure at all, some followed it, some bumped it, but didn’t hook up. Still, I managed to land 5 pike in the 62–67 cm range. Pike activity really does vary a lot from day to day; no two days are alike.
Now an electronic rotating mount for Active Target has been installed on the boat. It comes with a wireless pedal that lets you turn the transducer left and right. When fishing alone, this is especially convenient: you cast the lure and then, while retrieving, you may need to adjust the transducer direction if the lure or fish moves out of the viewing range. Before, you had to turn the transducer by hand in that situation, but then you couldn’t reel at the same time. Now it can be done comfortably with the pedals.
This year has been quite successful in terms of big pike. If I calculated correctly, I’ve caught 5 pike over 6 kg this year and several over 5 kg; the biggest has been 105 cm and 8 kg (in Latvia during training). I hope I can improve this year’s score a little more, unless winter arrives very unexpectedly.
Some videos were made too: