How to locate fish on a hire vessel.
Seven essential steps to locating action when you’re skippering your own vessel
There is no disputing the fact that northern Norway has the healthiest stocks of fish and the finest sea angling available anywhere in the North Atlantic, and if you hit things right, you’ll undoubtedly experience sport beyond your wildest dreams. Even a mediocre week’s fishing in this wonderful country will more than meet many anglers’ prior expectations, but, just like fishing anywhere, the sport in Norway can be tough.
I have spent more than just an occasional day afloat in Norway burning expensive fuel running from one area to another, scratching my head while wondering where all of the fish have gone.
The fact is that while there is no disputing that Norway’s fish stocks are vast, there aren’t fish everywhere. If you are operating a self-drive boat, you have to locate the fish before you can catch them.
In the last issue (Sea Angler 566) I looked at some of the issues that groups of anglers should consider when running a self-drive boat, a typical experience for the majority of the many British anglers who each year fish in Norway.
Of course, safely operating a boat is just a part of the equation.
Having arrived at your camp and settled in, attended the camp’s boat familiarisation course and been handed the keys to your own boat, now all you have to do is head out into the vastness of an Arctic fjord and find some fish to catch…or is it?
INFORMATION
The first step should be to obtain as much information about current and past hotspots in the area you are based at the earliest opportunity. Following social media in the run-up to your trip can be very informative, provided that you are savvy enough to separate the wheat from the chaff in the deluge of information that is likely to pour your way.
As always, up-to-the-minute catch reports are best. When you arrive, talk to anglers who have already been in camp for a few days. Most of them will be only too happy to tell you just what they have caught and, most importantly, point you in the direction of some of the current productive areas.
Of course, the camp staff are a hugely valuable
source of such information, which is hardly surprising because they live and work there.
Following your boat familiarization, ask the manager to suggest a few good areas to try on your first session.
CHECK THE PLOTTER
You will probably find that many of the most popular marks are already highlighted with icons on your boat’s chartplotter, along with the tracks followed during previous trips by the vessel’s last crew. If it does not have an electronic chartplotter, obtain a paper chart and ask the manager to mark the hotspots.
WATCH THE BIRDS
Often your eyes are the key to locating good fishing in Norway. If you can see two or three boats grouped together in an area, then you can be sure that they are there for a reason, so you should investigate.
Don’t charge up at full speed and come to a crash stop alongside them and demand to know what they are catching. Make a slow, considerate approach, stopping a few hundred yards away. Start fishing and keep an eye on what is happening, both aboard the other boats, and your boat’s sounder.
Birds are one of the prime indicators of locating feeding fish everywhere I fish in the world, and especially in Norway. I keep my eyes open for groups of birds that seem interested in any particular area plus, of course, flocks involved in a feeding frenzy, which should be investigated immediately.
In Norway, groups of gulls, terns, puffins and razorbills almost always indicate dense shoals of small coalfish or other species of baitfish, such as herring, in the vicinity. Whenever you find such concentrations of bait, you can be certain that predators, usually large coalfish, cod and halibut, will be nearby and active, invariably just below the shoal of bait.
DEPTH MATTERS
One of the biggest mistakes many anglers make during their first trip to Norway is to concentrate on fishing on or very near to the seabed, tactics typically followed when fishing back home. In these waters, fish can, and often are, active throughout the entire water column, right up to the surface.
On many occasions fishing in Norway, I have watched specimen cod, coalfish and even halibut inhaling lures just below the surface, despite being in many hundreds of feet of water.
This is one reason why shads are so effective. Shads can be fished from the bottom right up to the surface and are perfect for establishing exactly which depth fish are feeding; they have been my go-to lure in Norway for many years.
Modern colour-coded braided lines are a big help, too. If your reel is loaded with one of these lines, you simply need to note what colour band is currently showing when you hook up, then next time you drop down to that level you will know with certainty that your lure is working at the same depth.
DETECTIVE WORK
Often there will be no obvious visual indication of where to start fishing, and this is when you have to turn into a bit of a detective in order to locate fish.
At such times, a large-scale paper chart will prove invaluable, though a decent chartplotter can also be used to good effect. Any banks or plateaus in the area are always worth investigating, along with any significant changes in depth. Tides washing over such features deliver a continuous conveyor belt of food to waiting fish, and almost always you will find something to catch in these areas.
Of course, reefs are as productive in Norway as they are elsewhere. Countless millennia ago, the mighty glaciers that originally formed these vast inlets of the sea pushed tonnes of rock in front of them, as they slowly carved their way through the landscape. When the ice eventually melted, the moraine, as the rubble was known, was left behind, and this is the reason why you’ll invariably find reefs near the mouth of almost all fjords, with relatively clean ground inside.
You can be sure that any Norwegian reef will have a healthy population of resident fish. That said, provided that conditions are right and there are plenty of baitfish to feed upon, you’ll have every chance of finding a shoal of large migratory fish that tend to move around the fjords following the shoals of smaller baitfish.
LIGHT LEVELS
During the summer the sun never sets above the Arctic Circle, but even though it it always light, for some reason you will often find that the fishing at ‘night’ is much more productive than during ‘daytime’.
The lower light levels experienced during the months of the midnight sun certainly induce fish to become active here, just as they do at dusk and dawn elsewhere.
In addition, as the sun gets closer to the horizon, the wind often completely drops away, creating beautifully calm fishing conditions.
IN IT TO WIN IT
The one thing that is guaranteed in Norway, in exactly the same way as it is guaranteed anywhere else in the world of sea angling, is that if your baits and lures are in the boat, then they are not going to catch anything.
On more than one occasion I have simply stopped my boat over a seemingly barren and featureless mark and started fishing, and started catching fish.
Most small-boat electronics are good, but in order to show fish, they need to be adjusted for maximum efficiency, and most anglers simply leave them running in automatic mode. Consequently, just because your unit is not indicating any significant fish marks, it don’t always follow that there aren’t any fish present.
Often, once you stop and start fishing, the unit will start to show marks, especially if you zoom up the lower portion of the display.