We decided to take another trip to the mighty Lyngenfjord this year. April was going to be the month of choice for two reasons: One of us is going to be a dad in May so a trip in the months following would likely not be appreciated much. But more importantly, the big cod (Torsk) are supposed to be abundant during the early season.

After a little pirkpanic just before we left ('We don't have enough red and yellow pirks!! Disaster is about to strike!',claimed Ralph) it turned out at the airport that our suitcases and rods combined where a whopping 16 kilos overweight.
When we where checking in, trying our best to look innocent, we expected the inevitable, 'That's an additional 200 Euro's for the extra weight please!(have-a-nice-flight)'.
But the SAS lady never even raised an eyebrow and all was well. SAS, keep them in mind...

Flights went well and a few hours later we greeted Alf, the owner of the place at the airport of Tromso. It was cold, freezing and a nice gale was blowing to make things even worse. 'Naa, it is not cold' said Alf, 'ín fact it as been warm!
Not a single road has been closed of yet!' and he stepped on the gas as he took us over ice covered roads...


Fortunately one of us had the bright idea to book a bigger boat this year. Slower to sail, but with a little steering house in which we could all take shelter from the cold when it was needed. And indeed, it was needed. :-)



All though almost every day was windy, we were lucky to have a lot of sunshine as well. The view from the balcony of out lodgings looked like this almost every day!



And here's the view looking backwards to the lodgings when sailing out:



Fishing was quite different from last year, when we visited this same place in June. There were no small coalies this time. In fact, the total number of coalies caught this time was no more then 10. And they all came from the bottom. It seemed april was just a little too early for the smaller fish. Small cod, haddock, redfish and lum (Lom/bromse?) were still around though.



(Complete with Norwegian hat. :-) Redfish, quite nice in size was caught only 5 minutes out from the lodgings. The top one is about 50 centimeters.



Biggest fish of the week was caught like last year, by Ralph. This is him as he is drilling the fish.

 

And the result? A 110 centimeter cod, weighting 12.5 kilo's



All in all it was a good week! Too bad it was windy to very windy most of the time, and too bad the real big fish weren't there yet.





But it was nice nonetheless.

ps. We took about 10 red and yellow pirks with us. Only one was used during our stay..
And the big cod ?????

Caught on a silver and green stingsilda... :-) 
Here's a few hotspots in the area..