Hail the Halibut

I’m just back from a week’s fishing in Norway based around the island of Loppa which is just 150 miles from the Russian border.

My main target was to catch a halibut, something I’ve wanted to do since the late 1960’s when I read of Leslie Moncreiff’s halibut exploits around the Orkney Islands. On the cards were big cod, though the time period we were there is not generally noted for its cod fishing. We were all surprised by the sheer numbers of cod shoaled up in these cold northern waters with some big fish amongst them.

Ian Peacock, UK representative of the Norwegian tour Company Din Tur, has fished these northern Norwegian waters now for some 10-years and he made the comment that never before had he seen so many cod stacked so heavily over such a wide expanse of seabed before. So thick were the shoals of cod at times that just getting the pirk to the seabed was an achievement.

The snow was still right down to sea level and it was cold at times but not unpleasant, yet the scenery was spectacular, though that does not do it justice at all, in fact it was breath taking. Fishing in amongst the high sided fjords is another experience and I’m coming to feel an affinity with these Norwegian waters being drawn back time and again.

Did I get my halibut? I got two, the best a 25lber caught on 30lb Braid and an MTI 20/40 rod! What an awesome fish they are! I think the Holy Grail of European sea angling!

Well I’m not going to spoil the story of the rest of the trip for you all at this early stage as you can read the full article in Total Sea Fishing magazine very shortly, and boy what a story it is!

SPECIES ON THE FLY
I found out years ago that as an angler you need to give yourself goals in life to expand your horizons, just as good business people do as an incentive to always expand their business potential. If you don’t, you never move forward!

I’m still building my overall species count in the UK as many of you will know and I’m right on the tail of my 100 target, but I’ve also started a subsidiary list of species caught on the fly. I added a small cod on fly gear recently and that’s upped my fly caught species count to 15 in the UK and Ireland, and 17 in European waters.

With this in mind, a friend and another avid species collector, was recently telling me that he’s started to try for a turbot in the surf on the fly and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t achieve that when you think about it as turbot are often found just 25yds out in amongst the surf tables. I’ve also seen mullet, eels, ballan wrasse, weevers, launce and smelt caught on flies, so considering it, and including all the freshwater species available, a UK fly angler could conceivably target a full 30 different species on the fly. Now that would be quite an achievement!

It would be interesting to hear how many species other anglers have already notched up on fly gear inside UK waters?