Norway 2010 - Lauklines

Lauklines Kystferie

In 2010 I went on my first fishing holiday, this time without my wife Simone, but with a group of fishing mates from Holland. Our destination was the beautiful fjord of the Norwegian place called Lauklines. It was in the north of Norway, far above the arctic circle and because we went in June, there was going to be 24 hours of daylight.

When we arrived at our fishing bungalows, we checked out the boats and surroundings, you could see the fish jump at the surface of the serene waters between majestic mountains. The only thing we could complain about was the weather. The whole week we stayed it was rainy and cold with a lot of wind. We could only leave the fjord twice to fish on open sea, but fortunately the fjord itself is a real treasure on all kinds of beautiful fish.

Goal of my mission was to catch as may different species, which is very easy in Norway! It was a week living' on the tide: fishing one tide, sleeping another. We started right away catching nice dab, plaice, little halibut and bull trout, just in front of our cottage on little pilks and little chunks of fish. In spite of the weather, the boat fishing with our 40 hp outboard was great, in the fjord were many islands, so it was easy to find a spot where there was no wind. We caught a lot of haddock and as many cod as you would like. The ambiance is really fantastic, we witnessed some spectacular nature events. On one of the totally two days the weather allowed us to get out of the fjord , we had a humpback whale next to the boat! I will never forget that for the rest of my life, what a special encounter that was!　

A couple of days later we saw a sea eagle and filmed him taking a fish we caught out of the water. My buddy caught the biggest cod of our journey. At 130 meters deep, he managed to get an 1.30 meter and 30 kg at the surface on his spinning rod with a mackerel speed jig. We caught an enormous amount of cod this week, as many as you would like actually, but this one was far out the greatest.

My personal highlight of this trip was the fishing on the so called "holy grounds", the spot for halibut fishing. I managed to catch a halibut on my spinning rod with a 120 gram jig head and a Fox shad in perch colours. What an amazing drill that was, I refer to our media page for some footage of this catch. Sorry for the bad sound at this video because of the wind. 　

One of the islands in the fjord seemed to be a great habitat for cusk and wolf fish. We all caught a couple of them and we figured the wolf fish was very territorial. We used herring lines above the pilker which seemed to make the wolf fish extra aggressive. Very ugly fish, but fun to catch, mind the teeth though! Wolf fish is a great eating fish, but is pretty useless because it is full of parasites. The day before we left we found a school of sand eels and just below them a big school of coal fish. They are real reel smokers, fantastic sport with endurable drills. Very easy to catch on a 75 gram pilk which is reeled up slowly. Really one of my most enjoyable fishing moments ever!

Resuming that we had a really great trip, in Norway you can catch as many fish as you want in surreal beautiful surroundings. Accommodation and boat are very good! Check out www.lauklines.no if you are interested.

Tight lines!

Leon