opener I can tell you. I’m not sure what I expected

I recently read a piece by Alan Tomkins where he points out that most people do not ‘do something different’ (as many experts recommend) as what the other anglers are doing is usually the method that works. Therefor following what the locals or regulars do should make good sense. When I read that I found myself nodding, agreeing with every word. I decided to do exactly that on my trip to Finland, follow the locals – bound to catch that way.Finland was a new one on me. This was my first time this far north and it was a bit of a eye-opener I can tell you. I’m not sure what I expected – perhaps the odd elk or reindeer-pulled sledge with bear-skin hatted driver – but it certainly wasn’t the sight of people dressed in singlets and shorts, sweltering under a blazing hot sun. The Baltic too took me by surprise. My expectations were tainted with scenes from the old black and white war flics. Y’know U-boats, icebergs, Russian convoys, duffel coats and raging ten foot waves etc. The reality was slightly different. It was a massive, sun drenched lake. Flat calm, mirrored surface and radiating tranquility. And not an elk in sight.We had rather less than four days to explore and fish the waters of Finland around the city of Kotka. The local Kotka city council are working together with the Second Chance children’s charity to provide a summer camp. The idea is that a group of kids are flown out on a Monday and returned to Blightly on a Friday, accompanied by volunteer adult helpers. On this trip, the helpers were Jim Hickey and myself, but due to a cock-up of astounding proportions (of the British local-authority Political Correctness Jobsworth variety) we found ourselves flying out alone – with no kids! I won’t bore you with the details but suffice to say that there were several angry charity volunteers and a lot of very disappointed kids involved. Another volunteer, Barry, collected us at the airport and he gave us the grand-tour. The camp was beautiful. Log cabins, 100 years old, set on a heavily wooded small peninsular on a Baltic bay. Moored against the jetty and pulled up on the beaches were the Second Chance boats, all fully equipped with fish finders, outboards, unhooking mats – you name it, we had it. This made a nice change, as usually the charity is short on just about everything. In the main cabin we eagerly studied the local area sea charts looking for likely-looking pike spots. Barry brought us back to earth. In the four weeks since the camp had been established, not one pike had been caught. We were in for a tough time if we followed what the previous volunteers had tried. I got the impression they had all been lure fishing, so Jim and I resolved to try trolling livebaits. We went down to the small wooden jetty where the boats were moored and fished sweetcorn for a respectable bag of roach. It really seemed strange to be catching roach in an ocean where the occasional ship, bound perhaps for South America, cruised past on the horizon.It was beginning to get dark, the colour of my float slowly changed from red to black as the time slipped past. I looked at my watch. It was midnight! Over the next three days I managed to confuse my body-clock completely. The lack of a true night, added to some very strange fishing hours managed to stuff it right up. I think the sun set at 12 and rose again about 3.30. Jim and I were up the next day (morning?) and out trolling the likely looking drop-offs with the roach live-baits. We had a boat each and communicated via two-way radios. We covered a lot of water that day, and we found lots of fish – but what fish?. Herring or roach? It was impossible to tell. Uncertain too if the fresh water was floating above the saltwater, the sea was warm and flat mirror calm. No tides here to sir it up and no storms for weeks… My imagination was working overtime concocting theories as to where the pike might be. The nearest I had to a take was when I wound in a perch. My roach livebait had somehow taken on a substitute.Okay. By the end of the first days fishing we had ruled out the Baltic for this trip. The reason? No Finns were fishing there. Surely if it was good the Finns would all be out there too? Following this train of logic and recalling that ‘on dificult days, local knowledge pays’ we drove into town and called in upon our local Kotka council consultant, Sackary. This guy was great. Brilliant sense of humour and chairman of the local fishing club to boot! Not only did he tell us where all the Finnish angers were, but he also obtained for us VIP free permits and day tickets. By the time we left his office we had discovered that the Finns were all fishing for salmon in an arm of the nearby Kyme river. The place was called Korkeakoski and the guide book describes it thus; “The best place by the Kyme river and probably in the whole of Finland to catch a big salmon”. For a method, we would follow what the locals did – surely we couldn’t fail. Could we?The guy in the tackle shop by the venue could not have been more helpful. We would need tube files, and lots of weights. And “very strong line”. He wasn’t kidding. This was fly-fishing without fly rods. Bait is not permitted. Here’s how the locals do it:A tube fly is presented on a 10ft leader and a 2 or 3oz weight is used on a weak link to get it out. The rods are 12ft heavy carp-style jobs hooked up to multipliers. The method is to heave out the end tackle to the fast water on the far bank. The lead will slowly drag down the stream, presenting the tube-fly to a wide area of water. When it stops moving it is out of the main flow, so it’s recast time. The locals use 80lb braid mainline with 50lb b.s. ‘weak’ links. We soon found out why. We only had 15lb as our strongest mono line and 35lb braid. In some swims, on every third cast the weight would jam up on a hidden snag and we’d have to pull for a break. Invariably we would lose the lot. I shudder to think how much tackle is in that stretch of water, because this happened to every angler there, regardless of the b.s. of their line .The Finnish anglers we met were rather conservation minded in some ways but not in others. For instance, the use of lead was frowned upon, as it ‘poisons’ the water. Instead they use ‘iron’ (looked like steel to me) weights. Yet the banks were littered with discarded line. Thousands of yards, no, miles of it – and I do not exaggerate! Every inch of riverbank we saw was the same. The weird local method of crossing fly fishing and beachcasting with a rolling leger was new to us but we did as the locals did. When in Rome etc. From the trophy shots on the tackle shop walls I could tell that most fish were coming out in the hours of darkness, so we decided to revisit the river the next evening and stay late. And so did forty four (yes, I counted them) other anglers – all of whom wished to fish the same 200 yard stretch of water as we were fishing. None of them found it strange to be shoulder to shoulder with each other. Lines were crossing each other all over the place but nobody seemed to object. Except me that is. I just couldn’t handle that 1950’s style pier fishing crossed with the fly/beachcaster/rollingleger. Call me old-fashioned but it’s not how I want to catch my first big salmon, thanks all the same. Still, the angler inside me was arguing and scheming, working out the best way to fish it – and it’s NOT how the locals do it. If I ever do go back to that spot, I know how to crack that stretch wide open. Y’see, having a lake for a sea means that nobody has ever seen a sea-angler’s 4oz break-away lead. One of those under that weir sill with a polyball head on the fly and.…On our last day we found the place. A perfect salmon river, with only one angler fishing in a half mile stretch. Jim and I just looked at each other, we could have cried. We had wasted our time on the other stretch when we could have been here. When I revisit Finland, and I will, that’s where I’m going back to, but next time I’ll have chesties and a big flyrod with me – and more time than just a couple of days. Then perhaps I’ll do it justice.

My last cast in Finland was with a waggler. The hook was baited with sweetcorn and I caught a last ocean-going roach at midnight for the hell of it. As Arnie used to say… I’ll be back.