Alternate species

Its amazing how one fish has already transformed my fishing season. Generally I’d be tying more pike flies or studying maps of Replot’s waterways, but since my ditch fishing exploits the other day, I’ve spent most of the time researching a fish that until 3 days ago, I hadn’t really given much thought about since moving here to Finland. I’d promised myself though last year, that I was going to dedicate some time during the season to targeting a new species on the fly, and had chosen Asp as a worthy candidate and have even tied a nice selection of gurglers for days specifically set aside for them, yet its Ide that’s grabbed all the attention.

What’s surprised me though is that there’s very little in the way of information regarding this species on the fly. Yes, there’s a handful of websites that delve in to the subject…..but on a whole it just seems like Ide gets given a wide birth within the fly-fishing fraternity. Yet its classed as a predator, eating insects, crustaceans, molluscs, and small fish and will readily take dry flies, nymphs and even large streamers. If you didn’t know I was talking about Ide you’d be mistaken into thinking it was a blueliner Hollywood species…..wouldn’t you? General consensus though is that they aren’t a bad fighting fish, they just taste shit. Now that sounds like my kinda fish.

Anyway without delving into the matter more and to cut a long story short I shot out yesterday afternoon to chuck some fluff at Mike. I fished for an hour without a bite then within a matter of 5 minutes I had a brace of Ide - size unimportant. On….can you believe this 100mm saltwater fly I bought in South Africa.

When the 1st one took my fly It shot off like a bullet for about 20 m and then turned and jumped and from a distance my 1st thoughts were it was a Sea trout. It was only when I landed it on the shore did I realise It was an Ide……Result! I just sat there in amazement, gob smacked, honestly I was even more happier catching this fish than if it were a sea trout…..You’re all probably thinking peasant !
I very rarely take a camera with when I go fishing purely because its such pain setting it up, but as luck would have it I’d taken Lena’s along and just had to take a few snaps to show you all. I watched a short video a couple of weeks back where it showed caught trout and Salmon being released back from where they came. What made the clips so special were the last moments when the tail left the hands of the fishermen in slow motion, and how each hand instinctively held on for as long as it could and I caught myself doing the same with these 2 Ide yesterday. ……Stoked again!

You can see where I caught it with the Green dotted marker in the Google maps in the sidebar.