A few weeks back, the unthinkable happened and I lost my Tailwalk Power Rock rod and Stradic FK combo... That combo had worked really well from the rocks for me and even better off the SIB. Thus I needed to find something similar to replace it. I really couldn't justify the cost of it though and started looking for cheaper options...
For some reason, it appears that the market has geared more towards £200+ rods and I couldn't see many options of comparable rods for less than £100.
Now its no secret I use a lot of gear from Aliexpress and after trial and error, I think I've found out which companies tend to produce ok stuff and which ones crap... Thus I thought I might try and find a rod there.
Moreover, I started looking around in Youtube as well, especially in Russian channels as they tend to use a lot of this gear.
Somehow I ended up watching a video with a rod called Ruffy (!) by the company JOHNCOO. Its action and specs seemed close to what I wanted and after a quick search, I found it on sale in Aliexpress for around £40 delivered!
I pulled the trigger and a few days ago, I got it in my hands. First impressions were very good. Fuji guides, robust reel-seat and pokey/firm action. I went for the S862MH model (2.6m, 15-55g) that's more akin to the Power Rock I had.
Yesterday, I got the chance to try it out on the rocks in a short session. I used 20g+ darting jigheads and 16cm soft jerkbaits along with 28g cheburashka and 11cm paddletails.
The rod had no problem jerking the softpastic in 15-20m depth and I could feel quite easily any taps and touches. Did pretty well on dragging the paddletail on the bottom as well.
I got no monsters on the day but the fish were thick with big bellies and I even managed to lift a couple sizeable ones without the net...
Getting ready to spawn.
I'll let the video below show the rod better.
I know its entirely possible that this rod might break on the next outing, but I reckon even if it only lasts me one season, I'd still be very happy considering how little I've spent for it. I'm not in any way sponsored by JOHNCOO or anyone but feel like I had to talk about this rod as I was so pleasantly surprised by it. I'm very keen to see if it's anywhere near as dependable and impervious to some 'heavy handling', as the Tailwalk was. Only time will tell...
Tight Lines
Gear Used.
Rod: Johncoo Ruffy S862MH
Reel: Shimano Biomaster SW 4000XG
Mainline: PE1.5
Leader: Daiwa Tournament FC fluorocarbon 25lbs
Lures: 16cm soft jerkbait on 20g+ darting jighead, 11cm paddletail on 28g cheburashka.
Weather has been the usual up and down this month, but there have been a few good days and I've taken advantage of breaks in the storms. I've been fishing off the SIB mostly and at my usual spots as there was no time to explore further.
Even though the fish were still there, the 7.5c water temps after all the melting snow, has definitely slowed them down and as expected the bites were more finicky and would come very close to the bottom. The large shads that were so successful the past few months, were still getting hit, but I had to downsize to get more fish to stick.
At times the fishfinder would show shapes hard on the bottom, they were pollock and could still be caught but needed the lure jigged right in front of them to incite a take. Many fish had eye-worms.
I did manage to get a couple closer to 70cm though and they were all full bellied, getting ready for the spawn.
Fat belly.
A lovely one in the sun..
Better stamp of fish now.
A wee video as well
I've also had a couple shore sessions and the fussy bites were an issue too. Moreover, the fish were very colour-picky, with bright colours (chartreuse and pink) faring much better than natural ones.
Texas rigged paddletail with a 30g tungsten bullet weight and 8mm glass bead was the most productive presentation along with soft jerkbaits on 20-30g darting jigheads over cleaner bottom.
I got a proper shock at some point after landing a nice Ballan wrasse that put up a spirited fight! It was my first ever in February! Must be global warming...
There's a 7" DOT Crawler in there...
WTF!
Pink was the most effective colour on the day.
Something had a go at this one.
Bruiser..
I lost a what felt like a big fish due to the snap opening up and I now tend to tie straight to the Softplastic every time. A bit time-consuming but as the best chance for a big female is now, the stakes are higher and lost fish hurt!
Tight Lines!
Gear used (Boat) Rod: Tailwalk Saltyshape Dash Power Rock S90H, Reel: Shimano Stradic Fk C3000 Mainline: PE1.2 Leader: Daiwa Tournament FC fluorocarbon 20lbs - 25lbs Lures: various
Gear used. Rod: Sportex Black Pearl travel, 2.7m, 80g Reel: Shimano Biomaster SW 4000XG Mainline: PE1.5 Leader: Daiwa Tournament FC fluorocarbon 25lbs - 30lbs Lures: Texas rigged 4" bright coloured paddletails, 5" soft jerkbaits on 20-30g darting jigheads.
Arrived a couple of days ago from the Lofoten Archipelago in Northern Norway and I'll try and give a good account of my fishing there.
I was with my girlfriend (now fiancee) and we stayed in Henningsvaer, Sorvagen and Stronstad, thus covering a wide area of the main islands. We had booked 2 days on boats, one in Svolvaer with a guide and another one without guide at the end of the road in A, near where the famous Moskenstraumen maelstrom is.
I was pretty confident on the boat fishing as Norway is renown for it but I was finding very little info on the shore fishing of the area. Nevertheless, my main targets were the big coalfish and of course the cod.
With the help of Google Earth and various bottom contour maps, I marked down all the fishy-looking areas I saw and the plan was to just fish them hard and keep moving in run-and-gun style.
I had 5 rods and 3 reels covering from Light Game up to 400g lures.
I used the Light Game setup (MajorCraft Crostage CRX-784LG, Stradic 1000fc) mostly in harbours and freshwater, while the Gamakatsu Akilas Mobile 80H - Biomaster SW 4000XG was my main setup in most other 'wilder' areas.
The first couple days of the trip had us looking for sheltered spots as there were strong SW winds and significant swells. Light Game was king and I even managed to sight fish for codling under a shallow pier. The water clarity up there is unbelievable! As the winds passed it was time to try some deeper rocky marks with the heavier gear but despite my efforts, there didn't seem to be much life there.
Marks that id be pulling fish after fish over here, seemed to be unexpectedly empty...
Took me some more exploring and it wasn't until I started targeting areas with strong flows and mixed soft bottom, that the fish started coming. In contrast to the deep rock marks, these areas with strong flows (bridges, harbour entrances) seemed to have all the fish stacked into them!
Big shoals of chunky coalies and some Jumbo mackerel near the surface along with decent codling, whiting and haddock at the bottom, responded well in a variety of lures. Metals and topwaters for the coalies and mackerel while metals and cheburashka-rigged slim paddletails for the rest gave me hours of entertainment!
Sight fished codling.
From a deep harbour.
Loads of biters like this one.
My first haddock. Actually a much prettier fish than the pic shows...
Jumbo mackies were crazy.
Chunky coalies.
Codling from a breakwater.
Good fun on light game gear.
In spite of the good numbers of fish we were getting, the larger fish eluded us and I was hoping that the day out with the guide would help me suss them out.
My fiancee jokingly had me buy her a Norwegian handline with lots of gummy maks and spoons on it, in order to compete with my extensive array of expensive metal and soft plastic lures. On the day, there was still some chop to the water that made our guide Nigel keep closer in the bay than he would like. We drifted over 25-40m deep reefs that were often inundated with jumbo mackerel and baby coalies. Unbelievably I had only a few hook ups on my gear (one very solid fish) but somehow I didn't manage to land anything! The chop was getting to me and at some point I had to bend over and throw up...😵
My fiancee on the other hand, was absolutely killing them with the handline!!! She started off with a couple small ling and then the cod started coming!
By that point, I wasn't feeling well enough to tie a similar rig and I stubbornly (stupidly) persevered with the big metals and sps. After a while, my fiance started getting seasick as well and I took her handline while she was sick. It didn't take a minute and I was in to a nice cod! We landed that fish and after a couple more, we decided to call it a day as we had plenty of fish to feed us for days.
That trip really opened my eyes to how fussy these cod can be when surrounded by vast shoals of baitfish. Goes to show that all the expensive lures cant replicate the success of simple local tactics.
I've previously encountered this behaviour of predators preferring to hit shiny, multiple target presentations, when I was down south in Sark and sometimes the mackerel and garfish would show clear preference to rigs incorporating two lures (ie teasers) while almost ignoring single lure presentations. This was most prevalent when the fish were feeding on dense baitfish shoals.
The handline sorceress...
Such vivid marking on their cod.
She caught ling too!
Borrowed her handline for a minute!
Very hard getting past them.
After Henningsvaer we drove down to Sorvagen where we would be based for the next few days and where I was hoping our fishing would really fire up... And it did!
A few quick casts in Reine pier provided me with some much better coalies that pulled hard on the light Game setup. The next day we visited some of the marks I had noted down and we soon found the better fish.
It was a rocky point at the edge of a deep bay, with considerably more kelp than I had seen in other areas up there...
I was just casting and burning in a 40g slow jig, and got hit as the lure approached the kelp.
the fight was very familiar and soon after I landed a nice pollock (only 2 in the whole trip). The fish unhooked itself before the photo but I kept casting and soon enough got hit again in similar fashion. These fish weren't pollock though and were giving my gear a good workout! A group of coalies averaging 1-3kg were staging off the tip of the point and I was getting fish after fish on the jig. Pure bliss and more like how I imagined Norway fishing to be!
Open water coalies seem darker...
Great fight!
Soon after our arrival at Sorvagen, It was time for our day on the boat, fishing the Moskenstraumen waters. The weather report wasn't showing ideal weather, with the wind being opposite to the tide's direction, something that causes sharply humped waves, but was meant to ease later in the day.
As soon as we got out of the harbour, we saw birds flying and diving all around us. They weren't concentrated over any particular piece of structure, but just following shoals of fish (and feeding coalfish) over a wide area. I saw coalfish smashing on the surface, but despite putting the topwater lures on, I could see that most of the fish were keeping under the bait balls in 20-30m depth. Down went my 180g-250g metal jigs (with an added gummy mak as a teaser this time) and I hooked up first drop! the rod arched over and the fish was pulling hard or were pulling hard as it was two of them at almost every drop. they ranged from 3-6kg most of them and I couldn't believe how much pressure they put on my heavy rod (7'7" Spro Salty Beast Mega Jig/Spin/Boat Traveller). Unfortunately the chop was getting to my girl and with a heavy heart we decided to stop after only being on the water for a couple hours.. I did mange to get some cod too though by landing two of them along with a coalie on each of the rig's hooks!
They were everywhere!
Proper feeding frenzy down there...
I am convinced that it would have been a red letter day had we kept at it and in retrospect we should have just gone out a few hours later as the weather did improve markedly... Instead, we got engaged and went for a coffee and a rock fishing session! 😄
We fished the rocks near A, again simply retrieving 40g metals near the kelp edges.
Here though the fish were of a better size and within a couple hours, I smashed my shore coalfish PB again and again with fish of 3.5kg and 4 kg! I even managed to get some better fish on the topwaters and had a big fish smash the surface lure out of the water but without hooking up...
PB time!
Moskenstraumen at the back...
Solid...
And another PB...
I went to bed with sore arms that day...
After that day I had a few more sessions on the rocks, mostly trying to get a decent cod, and finally I got a 2.5kg fish from deeper water on a paddletail. Nothing to shout about in Norway but a shore PB for me nonetheless...
Huge head on that cod.
I have to say that if I was going back to Lofoten again, then Id definitely just go near A as the fishing potential of that area alone is huge! Nevertheless, we spent the last few days of our trip near Stronstad at the norther part of Vagan. Thanks to Airbnb we had found a spectacular house in a valley with a whole lake to ourselves and a rowing boat!
We had great fun fishing for brownies and small sea trout amidst unbelievable scenery and surprisingly good weather. It would've been nice if one of them Arctic char found its way to my spoons but I suppose this may be something for the next time...
Plenty of these..
Thus the days passed and I'm now back to wind/rainswept Skye. I have to say though that apart from the areas near A with the big coalies, most other areas I fished weren't really that spectacular fishingwise. As everywhere, the best fishing areas require various factors (current, depth etc) and its not like the whole of Norway is one big fish paradise (more like the notion I had). You still need to get out and search for the fish though the chances of success are far higher than in the UK.
Regarding light game fishing, the variety is very good and them coalies and jumbo mackies are mad especially when they would hit topwaters so much more readily than over here.
Below are a couple videos (more to be uploaded in my Youtube channel soon) and some footnotes/observations of mine.
Fishing notes for Lofoten.
Marks can be all or nothing from shore. Don't waste too much time staying in one.
Current and sandy bottom the most important factors to find fish.
Deep harbours and piers at the mouths of channels very good areas.
Any kelp/seaweed always a good sign, barren rock not so.
For coalfish find the bait and use straight retrieves.
Add a couple gummy maks as teasers along with your main lure when boat fishing.
Around the maelstrom might need jigs of 250g-400g or more to fish effectively over 30-50m. Considerably less around Svolvaer.
A 9' heavy spinning/ LSJ rod (15-45g) paired with a 4000-5000 reel and PE1.5 will suit most cases when shore fishing.
The bigger coalies are really more of a pelagic species and far less structure related than pollock. The bait is key thus exposed areas with strong currents will have more of them.
White topwaters were taken more keenly.
Fishing on the bottom can be slow as rock cod are usually solitary and there aren't many/any wrasse.
SWest facing marks usually better than N facing ones.
Clashing wind-tide direction at the maelstrom makes for uncomfortable conditions.
I don't usually elaborate too much on my gear as I prefer to make any comments on it after its seen plenty of use but this past season has seen me use quite a few bits of kit (more to come as well) and I'd like to say a few things about them.
Rods and reels.
In the beginning of the season last year I acquired my first Daiwa reel after a long time since I last used one... It was a Daiwa Freams 2500 and the first impressions were very positive. The reel had a very smooth drag and effortless winding. Long casting and light, it matched very well with my ML rods. A few months in though and after plenty of good fish it started loosing that smooth feeling. that didn't bother me much as I kinda expected it to happen. Where the reel disappointed me though was in the line lay. It may have looked very tight and symmetric on the spool but especially when I put on a fine 8-strand braid (YGK WX8) the problems started... I lost the first spool (30£) in only a few outings as I was having unexpected wind-knots way after the cast... I bought an other spool and also upgraded the line roller by adding an rbb thinking that this would help but unfortunately it didn't. I need to mention that I didn't experience similar problems with 4-strand braids on that reel although I didn't have more than a couple outings with 4-strand. In any case I sold the reel and decided to add a Light Shore Jigging Setup in my collection as I thought it could help me with the bigger fish here and also when fishing over thick kelp.
I chose the inexpensive Major Craft Solpara SPS-1002LSJ max 50g along with a Shimano Biomaster 4000SW and I have to say that this setup has done even more than I asked... I think there were only a handful of fish that cut me off on this setup and only in the roughest marks. The Biomaster though powerful, could've done with some more attention in assembly as I had to get a replacement handle knob cap and I now need 2 small screws as well (all got loose and fell off)...
From my older reels (Stradic 1000fc and Stradic 2500F Ci4) both are going strong with the Ci4 having had a service and a new RBB. Recently though I started to notice (by a friend's comment as well) that the drags on both the reels were slipping and generally getting inconsistent. The smaller one wasn't great to begin with and thus I thought that an upgrade may be in line...
After googling around for info, I realised its an easy process to do and duly bought two Carbontex drag washer kits, each kit fitting to the according reel, for less than 10£ each. In addition I got some Cal's drag grease for lubing the washers.
The process went like this: I took apart the drag systems, removed the worn out felt washers, lightly lubed the Carbontex washers, polished the metal washers and put them in the original order they came out. From initial tests there is a marked difference (positive) to the feel of the drag although I'm told it will take some good runs to get them in optimal working order.
The original drag assembly on the Ci4.
Notice the muck...
Worn out felt washers..
Shreds of felt were stuck inside...
The 3 Carbontex washers in the bottom.
Braid and Line.
Have been very happy with the Duel Hardcore X4 for a while now and I still consider it very good value for money. Tried the YGK G soul WX8 and was quite happy with knot strength, abrasion resistance etc though I'm not entirely sure that the wind knots were the reel's fault entirely. Regarding 8-strands, Ive had the Duel Xwire X8 on the Biomaster for a while now and it has proved to be a very good choice. Easy knotting, smooth and strong.
For my fluorocarbon leaders Ive mostly used Duel Hardcore Powerleader FC and the YGK Nitlon DFC. Both lines very dependable. I had high expectations for the Seaguar Ace fluorocarbon but it did not fare well with my knots. Good abrasion resistance though and a 'harder' feel to it than the others.
Offset Hooks.
I'm not gonna make this a full review of my tackle as it would be tedious but hooks (offset ones in this case) are very important especially at this time of year. Cant fault the Gamakatsu and Owners plus some of the newer VMC ones are holding up well (e.g 1x Strong) . Most of the Decoy ones like the 13 Salt and the RS worm hook worked well too. Wasn't very happy with the Crazy Fish ones, Mustad and Matzuo as they're either not sharp enough or too soft.
I have sold quite a bit of gear as well and making do with only (😆) 4 reels and 6 rods at the moment, covering from LRF (tub tip and solid) to finesse (solid tip), ML and Light Shore, not including the travel rods... My main aim for this season is to finally match a good Medium - Medium Heavy setup. Something in the lines of 9ft, 10-30g. I have already got the reel (3000 StradicFK) as I'm incapable of resisting a bargain and will be looking for a new rod soon!
Moreover I hope to get a quality long net for some of the high marks where access to the water level is tricky.
Recent fish average stamp.
Fishing wise the past week has seen rain and wind return to us but I've still had enjoyable and productive sessions even though I had to visit different marks to get out of the wind.
Seemed to be catching mostly smaller fish though and I'm considering that this may mean the bigger (adult) fish started moving to spawn. Will be out the first chance I get for some more!
Below some videos from recent sessions. Yes I can talk!
