Autumn is finally here!

 October, a month that resonates with all pike anglers! 

With the Covid situation the lodge is still closed at the moment. Tonight at midnight the whole country is passing to level 3 of restrictions. So we are not supposed to leave our county of residence, and the lodge cannot welcome people from outside the county...Again lucky for me i have loads of free time and plenty of water to fish!

With some early frost and sunny days, the weather was shaping up to be perfect last week for some fishing.

This is when you need to get out!

I decided to start dusting off my trolling gear and start tuning in the boat for this winter.

The lunar calendar was spot on, with a very wide major for the day i picked. Weather was for a cold start, fog and then sunny with an approaching front given for the evening. To add to all this the barometer was dropping slowly or the last 16 hours.

As you can see on the pics big lures where on the menu, 35 and 40cm was the winning combo!

Also check the sonar captures, you can clearly see the pike and the baitfish ball on each pictures. One thing to notice is also the configuration , look at the depth and the picture, they both look identical, but both are from a different spot and at a different time!

When you get so much information like this, there is no excuse not to fish at the right spots! 

New gear!

A new season is just around the corner here at the lodge and  as usual i'm getting the place ready to welcome new and returning clients to the lodge.
This year we are refreshing the stock of float tubes. I remember before everyone wanted to fish from big boats in big loughs, as many believed (for some strange reason) that smaller loughs and ponds would not have pikes in many numbers and more importantly in sizes. But the last ten years this has changed immensely due to the arrival on the market of much better designed float tubes.10 years ago float tubes were like a tractor tyre with two holes for the legs and a huge backrest that acted more like a sail than a backrest..I didn't like float tubing in those days.Your sitting position was so low on the water that at best times you felt like drowning...But it didn't take too long  for the major brands to improve on designs. Nowadays we have a huge choice in personal vessels and for all budgets.
Needless to say if you want something that last you need to invest a little. We have been using the tubes from Creek Company for a few years now, a nice tube but definitely not the best built. Stitchings didn't last long on them and a poor design for inflation lead to many twisted bladders, punctures and time wasted for me fixing them most of the time and for my clients on the water.
So it was about time to look somewhere else.

It's a good few of my clients that directed me towards the FLTB-5 from Caperlan. Caperlan is a fishing branch of a huge sporting chain called Decathlon in France.
All the reviews looked good and i had many good returns from my guests. Many of them do own a FLTB-5 and this was the reason i started looking into this model.
With the help of a client that works for Decathlon i managed to secure a deal and import 5 tubes ( 5 more are planned to arrive next year).

Like you will see in the video, they are pretty good at first sight and only time will tell how they last in the long run.
 But i will make a follow up video at the end of 2020 to see how they are holding up.