2024 - JUNE 25TH - HJALMERE CANAL - BANKS SIDE PREPARATION AND A LITTLE FISHING

I decided to visit the canal in readiness for the weekends event over the two days . 

The days position for me .......

METMASK Products 

Brand new whip floats ....'MM1' ........2,3,4,5,6gr

Arrival and started to clear some pegs of obstacles and grasses but on the weekend please bring your own cutters if you have , not that you really need them as all pegs are mostly clear. 

I counted the pegs from the first car park and we must be looking at 15/16 pegs with potentially another 5-7 pegs at the far end (if we require ?) 

On Saturday morning we can all walk the bank and decide for ourselves what positions to try. On the day who ever has peg 1 and peg 11 they can use their cars to block any arrivals . We have total permission to fish this whole length of water for the 4 days we have booked (June 29/30 and August 10/11) .

My place for the day

I set up;

- Float rod

- Feeder rod

- 7m whip

- 3m whip

- TAP T5 

- TAP T4

Soon the sun swung round so i was prepared with my Australian style hat and plenty of sun cream 30-50

Beautiful place to fish

Having arrived at 07:30am and spent 2 hours walking the bank and preparing the pegs i then took another 1.5 hours setting up . It was about 11:00am when i started my 5 hour stint.

I pre-baited the pole line and a line close in down to my right. I then placed 5 feeder full's in on far side where i expected the Tench mostly to be as well as the Rudd . Unfortunately in the 1st hour i only had small Rudd . After i played with the whips and caught see-through skimmers . I then went on the pole line and first 'put-in' and i caught the biggest Bream of the day  (estimated 1.8/2.0k) It was a shock as i thought originally i had stuck on the bottom but the fish shot over the other side with my 6-8 elastic at full stretch ! .......landed it , great start and it continued like that off and on . In the end i had 2 more good size Bream (1.3-1.5k) size with three Tench (1.5-2k) (and lost one ) ........i had my T4 setup with 10-12 elastic. 

Boats started to come through and stir the colour a bit but never really upset the fishing

Crayfish

The fish continued to blow late into the day 

Days catch ....just 50gram under 14 kilos 

BIG ADVISE FOR THE WEEKEND - BRING PLENTY OF FLUIDS , SUN HATS , SUN CREAM 

2024 - June 23rd - Södertälje Canal - Feeder fishing with friends

Decided to fish my local canal for some practice as there is a Team Feeder match here on 17th/18th August. Ivan and Borko and friend also joined me . 

Weather coolish in the morning with no sun so hopefully the Big Bream will come out to play ?

I set up the two rods on 21 and 28 turns . The 21 turns was settling in approx.12 seconds and the 28 turns took 15 seconds ! ummm quite deep however my choice of feeder might have slowed it down so i expect a good weighted window feeder would get there a little quicker , i speculate.

 

Borko to my right  and a small boat passes by

Ivan settled in as it his first time to visit the place

 

So we completed a 4 hour stint and Borko and friend go away earlier as they had a BBQ to go to .

Later i came in closer t about 15 turns dropping in 7-8 seconds and i had 5 fish very quickly however i had heightened my feeder arm as i was snagging on something and consequently i lost two feeders in 5 minutes !! Bad end of the day but i managed to scrape together about 3.5 to 4 kilos of mostly skimmer , roach with Bjorkna and Perch 

2024 - Total admiration to some of the fishing clubs and organisations here in Sweden

     On June 29th and 30th we fish Hjalmere canal and i have just had it fully approved we can fish there , just like the previous three years . (We also fish Hjalmere canal on 10th and 11th August).The reason we get to fish is that the people in charge at the PLATSANSVARIG HJALMERE CANAL AB want us to be there because of the high standards we have in respect to the canal sections we fish. They also insist that no ! TRADITIONAL METE can be performed on these waters.

     This is refreshing to me and many other responsible anglers in the country as more and more fishing clubs are stopping this ridiculous practice of TRADITIONAL MURDER as it is ANCIENT and totally OLD THINKING and needs to be stopped ...........Will SPORTSFISKARNA agree? 

     TOP man at TROSA AFK - Senior Bailiff is 'PASI' and the main reason standards of angling have increased at these club waters is because he has scared off many people of a certain demographic who just wanted to take barrels of fish and most cases have no fishing card permission. 

     He even held the TROSA open match as a keep net only, so no fish kill - Pleasing to many new anglers who will take membership with Trosa because of their stance on angling and this match . Pasi and Hans and all of you guys have my full backing for what standards they have set .

My latest correspondence concerning the booking of Hjalmere canal ........

 

Now the BAD NEWS .........

Here is a list of MURDER matches for this year from the SPORTSFISKARNA . Why has this national body not been brought to account over actively supporting and promoting these matches of such a low skill level. Do you think because they list INTERNATIONAL standards Matches it kind of appeases the situation? I have no objection to take reasonable levels of fish for food and i have no problem with ice fishing . But to actively promote fish wasted and not put to any use is totally wrong and does not look good in the eyes of the other European countries. 

 

Listing of Murder matches ...............

         MURDER MATCHES serving no purpose to fishing standards at all.......

2024 - June 15th and 16th - Arboga

     Normally we try this June fixture a week earlier  however due to other important matches being on the first June weekend we decided to fish this weekend. Prior to this competition the local DM series took place and big weights of 30 plus kilos on feeder and 18 kilos on whip were realised , so all bodes well for this weekend ?

     I arrived first to be greeted by Janne and Russ just after . Then the others like Esa , Thomas and Per arrived . It was fantastic to see these guys get started into grass clearance for all the 11 pegs . What a great effort from them all , totally priceless !

     Amazingly the guys even supplied me with a score board and brought the pegs cards with them (Janne and Thomas) , that was such a lovely gesture . So for the day my efforts were a little redundant except for my polystyrene numbered balls 😄

The mighty Arboga river - will it give us good fishing ?

DAY 1 

Esa clearing the last peg 11

My draw was peg 9 

Patrik 'The hit man ' Dahlstrom with Section A win with 7572

Janne on peg 3 with 2424

Thomas 3rd in section with 3312 of peg 5

Second in Section A was 'The Bream Basher' Esa ! with 5628 of peg 6

Also taking a nice Tench

Section B 2nd place went to Marcus  with 6022

New angler to our family was Tomas with 3315 of peg 8

To my Right on peg 10 was Per with Section B win of 10741 - He takes no prisoners !

Ivan with 4890 on peg 11 and 3rd in section B

DAY 2 16TH JUNE SUNDAY

........and i have the same peg as the day before

Scales at the ready - will there be more Bream today ?

Weigh in time and a great match by ever-present Kjell earned him 3rd in Section A with 6874

Marcus 2nd place from peg 2 in Section A with 7590

Patrick 'The Arboga Assassin' on peg 3 with 13281 and another first !

Per 4th with 6297 of peg 4

Thomas with 4634 of peg 5 

Ivan with 2686 of peg 6

Section B was Russ showing of his Big Tench and combined weight of 4478

Janne on peg 8 with 3rd in section and 5613

Well ! ....i started of really well with 3 skimmers and a big roach in first 10 minutes before anybody else started to catch !?!?! Is it my day i wondered but gradually Esa to my right started to bag up on good size skimmers . By the end of the match i was well behind but what did i do wrong? I cast same distance and used about the same feeder hook length and i could see i was using same bait and same size feeder but i could not get a consistent catching sequence going . I know peg 10 won it the day before with 10741 and today Esa had 13352 but how was it possible i came poorly behind each day . Oh well that is fishing .

Just 5005 (including two small Chub) for me and back to the drawing board as they say 

Esa 'The Terminator' with Section B win of 13352

Tomas 2nd place with 6654 - Great to have new anglers coming in and he will be on the Hjalmere canal weekend in 2 weeks 

Days results and payouts

The money allocated - Saturday

Money allocated Sunday

Total monies SWISHED out (in Green)

Total weights over the 2 days courtesy of Janne , cheers pal .

Products from the weekends sponsor (METMASK) and bait supplier