Gotland Spring Season 2019
When spring comes nothing can stop me from being at the water and I don't want to miss out on a single day. I am so grateful for having a job as a guide and being able to be out this much. It feels like a coin has fallen into place in my brain when it comes to understanding the sea trout on Gotland. I have had the best season of my life. That is because of the enormous amount of days on the coast since I started guiding sea trout in 2013. Standing behind other fishermen during guiding, seeing where the bites come and seeing different approaches to this challenge has been so useful. Here I share some of my favorite moments from spring 2019.
Season starts early for me and during the coldest months there are many big sea trout near the shore. A good opportunity to catch a trophy silver that I don't want to miss out on. Here is one of my favorite winter flies using easy shrimp legs. The movement the legs add works really well in cold water.
One guy that is just as crazy use to come visit me when there is still snow on the ground and that is Niklaus Bauer. He was on the island in January and he had amazing fishing with lots of silver.
The biggest sea trout Niklaus caught on this visit. A good start of the guiding season.
My closest guide college is Jerome Saunders. He guides with me every spring season from March to May and has done so for many years. When he arrived in early March to Gotland we were excited to start fishing. We had a few days to practice before the most intense guiding period started and that was good because we struggled to find the fish. But when we finally figured out the method that worked we got rewarded. This was the first fish. A farmed fish that we kept for dinner. The key to catch the fish was to fish very shallow with a small fry imitation very slowly.
The next day we were able to find fish on deeper water too. Here is one out of four I caught from my belly boat that day.
One of my favorite shots of this season. We were all fishing but I felt I had to step back and be ready with the camera in case someone hooked into a fish with that light in the horizon.
I took close to 1000 pictures that evening. There was so much color in the sky just above the horizon. Straight above there is blue sky, here you can see the magic of using a long lens. For the photo nerd: focal lenght 100 mm f4 ISO 1000 1/400 sek.
Crazy how lemon colored this fish was. Took just at a big rock out in the waves behind me.
My new PR sea trout measured 76 cm. I have caught one of 76 cm before and numerous 75 cm but I consider this to be my pr because this is the most recent and I think the heaviest.
Incredible fish that was landed by a miracle! It wasn't hooked but only the leader was though the mouth and wrapped in the teeth and outside the mouth. That it stayed on during jumps and a long fight is something I can't explain.
This evening I will remember for a long time. Jerome and I met up after our guidings and we were both really tired, I had almost given up when he did a long walk to a small deep pocket near the shore where the wind had been pushing in during the day. That's where he caught this beautiful sea trout. I came running to take this shot and then he said next cast was mine and the result is what you see in the next picture.
Just after. One of my most beautiful sea trout I have ever caught. 71 cm all thanks to Jerome.
I had an amazing flow during guidings this season and for that, I'm very humble. To find sea trout in all wind directions and not for yourself but others ain't easy. Sometimes I fail but during April I guided 28 days and every day my guests managed to catch at least one sea trout. Here is a picture from a dead flat day where we had sea trout rising all over the place and we just couldn't stop fishing until long after the sunset.
The setup I have been using the most this spring is the Vision Merisuola seven weight rod with XO floating line (8 weight line) and Merisuola 7-8 reel.
Last day of fishing, I took this shot when we cut off the flise off the leaders and packed our gear to head home. One last picture to remember the wonderful and very successful season.
A big thank you to all guest booking me as your guide! I now take bookings for spring season 2020.
Best way to send me a request is by email robert@fishyourdream.com
Fly Tv reactions and fly patterns explained
It is finally out there! The fly tv episode Pontus Sjölund, Steffan Jensen and I made on Gotland this spring. There is no major spoiler in this text, you can read through this post and still enjoy the episode afterwards... Read More