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Jolly Boys do Norway Part 1

Mr Fish

Mr Fish

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Finally got around to doing a report, where to start?! I left home early hours on Monday, June 17 to pick up @tatunkajoe from East Devon and then we made our way to Heathrow to meet Ollie @Ollieollie, Jon @Jonnylongshanks, Rich @Stone and James, the vet-turned-dentist, who I believe isn't on the forum.

Destination was Sorvaer on Soroya in Northern Norway, which meant three flights in one day and a long day of travelling.
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The puddle jumper to take us on the final leg of the journey.

Only things to note on the journey was at Oslo airport when somehow our group was bumped off their system 30 minutes before the flight and we had to rush around the airport then go back through security, arriving on board the
plane completely knackered (in my case) and with minutes to spare.
Oh and they managed to leave Ollie's tackle bag at Tromso...

But he did land the first halibut without wetting a line!
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Arrived at last and mostly unpacked

We were greeted by a guide, Hampus (I may have spelt that wrong) and he showed us the boats. Have to say was very impressed with the electronics, which have been upgraded even more since our last visit two years ago, touch screen plotter and sonar, lovely to use.
Boat 11 pictured here was Rich, Tat and me, boat 8 was Ollie, James and Jon.
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Day 1
First day we planned to hit the deeper cod reefs about seven miles out.
Usually this is a banker mark for me for the bigger cod but I freely admit I didn't quite get the location I wanted - new plotters and frankly it's just been a long time, so we were in the neighbourhood on the outer reefs but not quite where I'd planned to go.

We had a few nice cod but nothing really massive
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Rich had his first wolf fish

Continues below…
 
As the fishing died we headed back to the house to refuel and the plan was to fish the harbour for plaice and dabs over the slacker part of the tide before heading around the corner for an evening in 'Booby Bay'.
The harbour threw up some cracking dabs for Rich especially, and Tat, but I couldn't buy a bite. The other boat had a small plaice and some dabs.
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Tat also had some sort of scorpion fish!
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Then we pushed around to the bay, not too far from camp and perfect halibut ground, with long drifts where you can troll live or dead baits and flick
lures without worrying about resetting the boat too often.
It was slow going at first - were we even going to see a halibut? Then finally, Rich was in!

Not a massive fish but his first ever halibut and incredibly or perhaps down to Tat's skill, it came to the gaff first time and was in the boat.
Nice pyjamas too 👀
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So a fulfilling first day of fishing and although no red letter day or huge fish caught, there were plenty of fish and the targets were hit - cod, then
dabs/plaice and finally halibut.

Day 2
The weather was a bit shitty for the start of the next day and everyone needed to catch up on some sleep.
Anders, one of the guides, offered to take us out to another reef on the outer ring called Runninge as several of the lads still wanted to get a big cod and the previous day hadn't quite delivered.
Anders went on the other boat and there hadn't been much communication on the mark location, so I looked at the plotter and chose a northern section of the reef with several features which I felt looked fishy. A good move, as it turned out.

The fishing wasn't hectic but we had several good cod, plus I had two ling, best 14lb and something I have caught before but never in Norway - I guess
usually they prefer pirks and bait rather than shads, but these two came on shads.
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The fulmars were a right pain though
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Periodic checking with the guided boat revealed they'd had, err... very little...

As the tide slackened and the fishing died off, we decided to move out into the crazy deeps of 200-metres plus to try for the large redfish.
Dropping down with coalfish strips resulted in turdfish after turdfish - and 200m is a long way to haul up a turdie!
Vowing never to return, we moved back towards another reef the others had tried earlier for halibut and blanked on.
Edit: It was only on the last day a guide told us for redfish you needed to fish 10 metres off the bottom, whereas we had been ledgering hard on the bottom. Sigh. Still, we know for next time!

The others had moved inshore to target halibut and we planned to join them, but dropped in on the coalfish/halibut reef first.
Well, it was alive down there with bait balls and Tat landed a cracking cod of 38lb (I think, memory is hazy!) which made it well worth it!
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He also had a small halibut which fought harder than the cod!
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By then we were mostly done and when we heard from the others they were giving up and heading in, we joined them.
James had had a halibut at least so they had hit the target in the end.
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The plan was to fuel up then try the harbour again, which we did, but a very nasty squall complete with winds and lightning blew in after we'd had a
couple of dabs, so we beat a hasty retreat back into dock and called it a day.

I'm trying to remember everything chronologically and might not have got all this entirely in the correct order, so hopefully the lads can steer me right if anything is out of whack.

Stay tuned for Day 3 - the endless day of great fishing and much discomfort!
 

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