Kvarken International Pike fly tournament

With the coldest winter here in Finland for 70 yrs, conditions just weren't ideal to say the least.Pike were three weeks late into spawning due to colder water conditions which made the fishing extremely hard and more to the point frustrating at times. The fishing grounds were teaming with pike but were reluctant to take fly and any fish caught were nearly all post spawn. Never the less there was a real buzz within the teams and some decent fish started getting pulled out.

Henk-Jan with a 98cm

Pierre-Luc with a 78cm

Henk-Jan with a 96cm & Sander Van der Wal with an 88cm. This was probably the best 2 hours fishing of the whole week and I'll write something about it for tomorrow.

David Smith with the 1st or 2 pike over 100 cm. This one was 106cm

Benoit Brumiller with a 90 cm

David Smith with his 2nd at 103cm

Erik Hakkert with an 80cm
Me with a small Jack of around 70cm

Due to a problem with the Internet wireless at the lodge we were unable to update the daily standings and catch progress. Anyway Finland had sent a strong team which left the others playing catch up the remaining two days. With pike either spawning or in post spawn blues getting pike to take flies became increasingly frustrating for the teams. With weather conditions changing daily.....so did the tactics. The Dutch four changed their approach from using their long bunny streamers to shorter 100mm schlapen baitfish patterns while the English team kept plodding on with their typically British bulldog never say die approach.After 3 grueling days
1st place went to Team Vision (Tuomas Rytkonen & Saku Pylvainen) from Finland with a total length of 1449 cm
2nd place went to Team England (Mike Smith & Guy Eldridge) with a total length of 1162 cm
3rd place went to the Dutch four (Harmen-Jan Platvoet & Erik Hakkert) with a total length of 1062 cm
A total of 127 pike were caught during the tournament and over 421 were caught for the whole week. 8 PB's were broken as well