JÄTTIAHVEN VAATII NOPEAA UITTOA - PredatorMasters with Ruoto | Jakso 2
Welcome to back to lake Saimaa. Today we’re going to find out the winner of the perch-day. In PredatorMasters the anglers are fishing the three most common predatory fish in Finland: perch, pikeperch and pike. On perch-day our event center is Karhupirtit cottage village.
Sami from Karhupirtit, will tell us about the area. On area of three hectares there are two large villas Karhupirtti around 200 square meters. a log villa with 14 + 2 beds right next to it is another villa Hietapirtti these two are located 50 meters apart Hietapirtti has 10 beds Both villas have fully equipped kitchens, grand recreation rooms and rooms with fireplaces. Villas have their own saunas with electric sauna heater and wood-burning sauna stove in both. In the area there is also a more luxurious smoke sauna, its spacious steam room can fit in up to dozen people at once. This time we have four teams competing, so let’s see who is who.
PredatorMasters is sponsored by: It’s known fact, that there are a lot of big perches in these waters in various spots it’s worth coming here and getting them. I’ve caught a kilo and a half perch it was at the end of a semi-desperate salmon fishing day I was reeling in and wrapping up my gear and I thought my lures got stuck at the bottom but instead, I was dragged into serious fish-fight. That’s my personal record. In PredatorMasters the anglers are fishing the five largest fish per fish species. The rules are as follows: In PredatorMasters points are awarded from all three fish species.
In addition, so-called Big5 points are given. The minimum size for a perch is 30cm and points are awarded according to the ranking. The length of the tallest pike, pikeperch and three tallest perches caught within 3 competition days are all added together for a Big5 score. After all these points are added together we have a winner. Let’s look at the rankings, before competitors head-out to the second half of the perch day. Garmin is in overwhelming lead with its 198cm score.
However, waters of Lake Saimaa are famous for bragging size perches and any of the teams could stumble into a kilo class school of perches at any time. Performance of the competitors in fishing contests and their record catches, can be found at Canal Outdoor Instagram and Facebook pages. Let’s kick-off the second half of the perch day and see who wins! I've noticed that perches need speed in retrieving in order to make them strike. Fast pulls near perches to get their attention to the jig. As soon as even one perch starts following jig, I start reeling it up in fast speed. That has been a winning formula.
If I just keep jig steady with slight movement near perches, they won’t bite. But now some perches start rising. Garmin continues from where they left off. Again, there is fish on the screen. Tomi Tikkanen and Saku Laaksonen fish with two live sonar technique.
Both have their own screen and sensor. Surprise, surprise BullTeez. Could it be 40cm? Perchfection! They reached 40cm magic limit again Garmin is on fire.
It’s clear that we need to get big perches to scoreboard quickly only in that way we have a chance to make the grade today since some teams have caught respectable size fishes. Even this caliber perch is not enough to turn the tide. Off you go and keep on fishing. It came with 10cm Orka Small Fish in vendace-like color.
It has a very natural swimming action it doesn’t do much nothing at all in the water subtle rod tip movements bring tail alive it’s a new model of Orka Shad. Fish on! This one is better! Reel it in. If this turns out to be a perch, it’s a nice one. It’s Perchie for sure. YES! Thank god, you didn’t throw ice fishing lure into the lake. It was a close call.
Precision jigging is difficult in these conditions but this is the reward. There were few other nice fishes, yeah, there was a real piggy train. 37cm Dear viewers, you have probably wondered on what principles team Garmin has chosen their fishing spots. Let’s hop into Saku’s boat on practice day and learn how to find grand-size perches in the largest lake in Finland. A starting point to the autumnal perch fishing in clear waters like these is when the perch starts schooling and seeking slightly deeper waters.
In other words, starting to exit the summer spots. So far we haven’t found many spots with unified perch schools. It’s more like there are wider areas where large perches have gathered and they are scattered here and there.
There might be few larger groupings but the actual perch schooling takes place later in the Autumn. In reality, the area that's open here is immense. If we scale the view a bit, we exit from the very large open waters first to smaller waters into likely gathering to "hibernating" places for perch.
In other words winter territories of the perch. In Autumn season, when moving away from the deep open waters for example, to a diverse area like this with deep water, lots of shallows and rocks might be good. A basic principles for choosing an area: the area should be rich in bait fish and fish in general in order for perch is to be found in numbers. A single perch can be found anywhere regardless of the depth range. But to the find them in large numbers is a different story. Here we can see a calmer area with capes, bays and coves they are all potential Autumn perch spots.
We have a new strategy. We spent morning hours in inner portion of the lake It became evident that biting perches were non-existent there. At this point the Garmin train has left the station and Ruoto and Mercury have resembling competition cards. with their 30-40cm fishes. Our strategy is to fish spots that closer to wider open waters that are also more open to the elements much faster fishing and shorter time spend in one spot we go through lot of spots and with this technique we try to find the fish out there. Garmin is on a roll.
A kind of perch. It’s an improvement. Is it over 40cm? Yes. These keep coming. This feels like a same caliber fish. I’ll take it in with a landing net.
No, it’s not. Doesn’t qualify to the competition card. Nicely hooked from the upper lip. We found a way how to make them bite. Lure retrieval is jerking like this.
When a perch shows interest, start retrieving upwards faster, faster. That one didn’t strike. Faster than this? Yes, look.
This one didn’t bite either. Now it bit. It stroked from the side.
Retrieving speed should be such, that one can see if perches get interested. When that happens, increase the speed even further. Now it’s a good size.
Yes, in the box. Put it down. Now it’s dandy. Let’s put it in the box. This one was on fire for a while, Westin 4 inch BullTeez.
pretty color, 18 grams jig head and fast retrieve. Just wait until the fish reacts and then increase the retrieving speed. Activity of the fish came to an end, so we must start anew as well so to speak. We changed our fishing area and drove to slightly calmer waters this is an area that gave us nice perch during practice by using the precision jigging method.
We changed our fishing style into a search of single large perch. Here is a flatter clay bottom area and this is not a rocky spot unlike our previous fishing spots. Therefore, it’s easier to localise individual fishes here even if they are close to the bottom. we can get them into to the LiveScope beam and start fishing them with precision method.
I believe this is the most efficient way for us to catch bigger perches for the rest of the day. I feel that the fish bite tailed away in the rocky spots so, we need to try out something different for a change. It appears to be an improvement. What is it doing? We got couple of centimeters more to the scoreboard. Way to go Janne, works like a charm. Great.
Jig has been goggled up deep into the digestive system. A change in the menu. Let’s see how much we can get with this one. Narrowly 34cm. Recent 1cm improvement to the perch count came with this light olive color Sewro jig. It seems to be popular among the perch feeding in mid-water.
Take that. I will swing it in here. Would they start biting again.
Does it bite? Not yet. Hooked, This is a better one. It took a while to decide.
I have a treble hook, so I'll lift it in with a rod. Go ahead. Fish like this brings us closer to raising the Trophy cup. It was eyeballing your offer for a while. 36cm Important centimeters, we were able to add 2cm to our scoresheet I’m glad we can wipe-off those scrawny thirties from the competition card and it feels good, YES! For precision perch casting I have a new Savage Gear SG8 reel in size 2500 and Savage Gear FPS Jigging 10-35 grams rod.
Even though this is a 7’6″ rod, it doesn’t feel that long in reality. It has a long rear grip and the new reel works like a charm. These are available with long warranty periods. Really sensitive. I really do like the flat reel handle on these reels. Go and check it out at the nearest tackle shop.
When we are moving from one perch spot to another. We always keep an eye on the pikes when over the deep water. In wider open waters there seems to be quite a lot of big pikes under the schools of vendace. Since we have a 111cm pike already, we don’t need pikes smaller than that. If we can find a real big daddy, we’ll give it a try. We are using the live sonars in such a way that we have always perspective showing what’s in the moving direction, and with so-called normal live sensor we can watch into any direction we choose.
It’s an advantage in many ways For example, when driving in the shallow areas perspective is unbeatable because it shows stones, rocky areas and everything and based upon that we can avoid them. When fishing for large fish we can always see it as in relation to the boat, even if we’re on the move it shows up beautifully on the screen. It’s an extremely useful tool, once you learn to use it. Here is an excellent new feature in Garmin live sonar if Saku turns the sensor, the boat symbol can indicate the direction of the live beam.
There we have an another live sensor that shows currently what’s on the right side of the boat. Tikkanen went over there to swing it. It’s like the windshield wipers in a car. Live sonar is a great tool, especially in perch jigging, since we can see in real time how the perch react to jig. Is there anything going on? I’m using a Westin Finesse T&C series rod. I think this is the W6 line.
The recommended lure weight is 5-15g and it’s just about right for XXL perch fishing. The rod action is such that a big perch cannot shake itself off the hook and the rod can follow the perch moves effectively but rod has enough power to bring fish to the surface. Weather conditions are rough, so driving and using sonar is easier with the main outboard motor. In better conditions we could use only a trolling motor. Now using a trolling motor would slow us down and for me it’s easier to steer the boat with the outboard motor.
However, trolling motor has certain advantages it makes less noise and doesn’t scare fish as much. Sometimes perches are timid they might even evade a shadow of the boat from several meters away even as far as from 10 meters away. It has been quiet on the fishing front we have found fish, but they have not been eager to bite. a few have nibbled the tails but other than that fishing is really slow at a moment. A slight improvement, perhaps.
Let’s check out quickly if this one brings an additional centimeter. Can we stretch it to 36cm? Yes, 36cm. Way to go Kalle! This could be described already as a lucky lure of the day. It has attracted quite a few fish that have not reacted to anything else.
It’s a Lunker City SwimFish 2,75" in Arkansas Shiner color. It has 7g jig head with a 1/0 hook. Some of the fish have been rather phlegmatic today and don’t seem to bite on anything but with this jig we have been able to pick them up. I am making blind casts with a green back jig, similar to what Janne is using. I have 13g jig head and we are casting in a 10 meters deep strait.
In this way we are trying to find fish faster than using the sonars. This is the time to have an overview of modern fishing boats. Toni Pohjalainen from NorthSilver Mercury will tell us about the boat brand he’s representing. Customizing and equipping a full-blown fishing boat to various forms of fishing and familiarization to the live-sonar fishing are both included in the service concept. Now I’m using NorthSilver 615 Fish which I have used as a fishing guide for the second year already.
I’m very pleased with this boat, and it has served me well in my occupation as well as in my race fishing activities. Really fast and steady boat. NorthSilver factory is located by the Vyborg Road close to St. Petersburg. Aluminum boats have been manufactured there from the early 2000s. They took an interest on fishing boats designed for cast fishing in 2015, when the first one was designed.
It became a rather popular and sought-after product both to their domestic market but via different boat shows and expos it has gained popularity in Europe as well. That’s how I got introduced to the product. Relations with the factory were established and few years ago I started importing NorthSilver boats to Finland. Reception of the boat in our markets has been positive and it serves well our cast fishing customers and their needs. Hi, my name is Teemu Hiltunen and I’m from Mercury Pro Team Finland in the background you can see a Mercury Pro XS. These motors have been calibrated in such a way that allows these outboards to rotate 200rpm faster than normal engines.
Which means that these outboard motors are more efficient and provide reliable performance in all circumstances. Advantages of Pro XS models: you don’t have to rev your engine to redline, it’s easy to get boat on plane and these are surprisingly economical outboards. Sometimes things don’t work out as planned, when flow is bad, one should try new things and tricks Yesterday we found fish in here, but now it’s gone We just must make casts a scattering of baitfish over there, we will just make few casts and see what happens.
Hopefully we find some fish there. Doesn't quite cut it to the measurements. But let’s measure it anyway. 23cm Yes, not quite enough, but check it with measuring board. 26cm I just wonder the size of fish we released today without measuring, If this was 26cm . That thought came into my mind earlier on in the end 30cm isn’t that big after all this was just 4cm short.
Your earlier catches were within similar size range. Exactly. I would argue that I caught a bigger one than this, that we didn’t measure. Ok.
Lesson to be learned for the future. It was slightly more on that sector. Lot of effort for this perch. We are being tested.
Now it could be. Really? Fish is active and biting the lures. It is a limit-size, but not by much. Clearly. Now it could be.
It would be great, if it was. It is after all. Perch are biting well.
It must be a mother of all chow downs, if I can catch a fish. Fish on. Is it a better one? No… but yes, pretty good. Really good actually. Yeah! Could be an improvement by a whisker. Would it be 42cm? What is our smallest? 41cm. Straight out to the measuring board. At least 43cm.
This jig doesn’t require an introduction anymore. I would call this 44cm. And 44cm it is. We are using two live sonars, Saku has his own mount on the other side of the boat which he can rotate and check bow screen for results. I have back here my own screen and rotating mount.
It is highly effective as we both can precision cast for perch simultaneously and we can see in real time how perches react to different lures. In Saimaa the perches are king-sized. …or at least in the fish livewell of the Garmin boat. …but they are not swimming around our boat. Comes. And no.
Why are you catching wrong species? Just maintaining skills. At end of a pit there is a large school of baitfish pikes and few perches are underneath the school. I already got one pike from the spot. I have a hunch, that they are too-well served with the lavish food supply nearby maybe we have to find hungrier fish elsewhere.
Is it a stripey? Rather decent size. Do you need a landing net? Nope, I’ll just lift it in. Alright. Perchdown!
Just short of 40cm. But improvement nevertheless. It’s 37cm.
Well done. A minor improvement to our competition card. Nice fish, though. We drove into this inner bay.
Water is about 10 meters deep around us. Conditions were pretty rough out there so we cannot fish all the spots we intended. However, we have caught two 37cm fish from here by casting therefore, our last-minute prediction regarding this spot was right on the money. Now, the aim is to find even bigger perches with precision fishing we’ll try to get few more centimeters to the scoresheet.
Next one coming up. We are in the hurry. Maybe not enough to upgrade our total score.
In recent years the technology of the trolling motors has made rapid progress. Let’s have a look at Garmin’s solution in Saku Laaksonen’s boat. We are using a Buster XL boat customized to fishing. The boat weights around 1500kg and it’s full of batteries, gear and equipment whatever is needed in fishing.
We have a Garmin Force trolling motor that is designed to slightly larger and heavier boats. I chose this trolling motor because this motor has enough power to keep boat anchored or move it in all weather conditions. There is a very useful feature in this Garmin trolling motor a point-and-go gesture steering.
We can just point this remote control at any direction and push the button and our trolling motor reacts accordingly. We can turn the remote control to any direction and as a result our trolling motor is also pointing to desired direction. This feature is very useful when fishing the edge of the reeds. We can point the remote control towards desired direction and as a result, the boat stays in defined course.
There is one more useful feature in Garmin Force that is built-in in the remote control. One can create customized views, that can be called upon via shortcut menu with four programmable memory slots each time I push the button different pre-programmed view appears on the screen. For example, If I’m standing on the rear casting deck and I want a different view I just push shortcut menu and it chances view to whatever I have saved in the memory slot.
It’s time for the last jig swaps and final sprint. Every fish is a bonus. Closing in. I have a fish at the end of line. Seriously, could be a scoresheet catch. Yes, it’s 30cm alright.
I borrowed Pyry’s fish for a moment, because I haven’t got a 30cm sergeant myself today. That it would appear as if I have a touch to the fish as well. It came in the nick of time Pyry was able to hook it from an ex-tempore spot just in time.
One more fish to the scoreboard. Each fish was a hard day’s work. Almost a semi-desperate move to shoreline resulted a prospect for scoreboard.
Maybe we should made bolder moves earlier and try new things. Something that wasn’t tried in practice. Chance in the weather was radical compared to yesterday.
It’s obvious that fish aren’t biting today as well as they were yesterday in the spots we practiced. Maybe we just simply ran out of spots and our own focus and fishing was too much influenced by yesterday. We got fishes, but unfortunately, they fell 2-4cm short of the limit. Quantity was good, but quality was bit too short. Our efforts showed the absence of the target fish.
We have a big perch on the screen and Kalle is trying to get closer to it. But it seems like, it’s fleeing from us. Let’s see if it stops and we could give it a try. However, windy conditions that we have makes casting more difficult. Strong wind affects the line.
I just try to anticipate it, but at 20 meters it’s harder to hit the targets accurately. Saku, we have still 40 minutes remaining in the stopwatch. 218cm on the scoreboard, the smallest is 41cm.
44cm times three, 45cm and 41cm The average length must 43cm. Or 44cm almost. 43cm at least.
41cm is the embarrassing odd one out let’s try to the eject it off the scoreboard. 220cm as a total score would be outstanding. and we have the bonus pike, bogeyman.
Bogeyman to the Big5. We also have strong perch line-up to Big5 as well. We soon find out what’s going to happen. The final battle. Let’s wrap up for the day.
The perch day is now over, it’s time for group calls where teams find out the final score. Team Ruoto, our largest perch was 36cm overall size 174cm, that's 4cm upgrade to the previous report no bonus fishes. It’s team NorthSilver Mercury, the largest perch was 37cm overall size 183cm, no bonus fishes. Team Lowrance, the largest perch was 37cm overall size 97cm no bonus fishes. Team Garmin, our largest perch remained at 45cm overall size 218 cm as a bonus fish we have a 111cm pike. That’s one impressive card.
Hats off. Congratulations to team Garmin. Happy perchday to you! We were able to name the best team of the day. That’s the way it usually goes.
A knockout competition card. Top notch fishing from Tikkanen - Laaksonen duo. Great that NorthSilver and Ruoto were able to improve their score as well.
Everyone improved their result, that left a good feeling, I think. There were impressive fish in the results we were completely out of the race today. The hotshots were in the league of their own. Nice fish, skilled fisherman and probably quality spots. Now it’s a dinner time and tomorrow it’s pikeperch day on the agenda. Tomorrow we are going to land some serious pikeperchies.
For our part the perch day is wrapped up. We already took the boat out of the water. We went through the day and analyzed what worked and what could have been done differently but came into conclusion that we got the size of fishes what we're expecting we didn’t even see bigger fish at practice. We couldn’t cast all the planned spots whole day in the morning the weather was calmer, but the wind picked up later. We fished the spots according to practice, and completed the card, but we found some new good spots along the way. We could improve our score throughout the day. Nice perch fishing, even if giants went missing.
But we had to work for it, it was a windy day and fish density and big fishes were not that plenty at our spots. But we are pleased with the results, it was a good day for us. Our top scoring lures were this smaller one at the end of the day and in the morning Sewro 12cm with olive color back.
Morning fishing went according to plan, but in the afternoon our plan simply didn't hold. We just couldn’t get the biggies bite; we didn’t even find that many. Even the ones we found were not active.
Such is fishing, need to practice more. Here is the score after thrilling perch day. Garmin’s hunch for spots combined with the use of two live sonars was an overwhelming recipe for success. Garmin 218cm NorthSilver Mercury 183cm Ruoto 174cm and Lowrance 97cm Let’s take a look at Big5 scores as well. Garmin 244cm NorthSilver Mercury 111cm Ruoto 107cm and Lowrance 97cm. Garmin made a strategically brilliant move by fishing oncoming pikes they have a 111cm pike already in the Big5 table.
Such is the size, that it might be difficult to match that in coming days. Finally, the scores. Garmin 4 NorthSilver Mercury 3 Ruoto 2 and Lowrance 1 From this situation we head out to lake Kivijärvi in Lemi.
The race continues next week, when competitors fish for pikeperch and five biggest pikeperches are decisive. If you are interested in competitive fishing check out pikemasters.fi there you find our open fishing contests put together a team, fish anywhere in Finland, welcome aboard.
2022-01-19 15:16
