Swedish Kayak Fishing Championship – SM

Last weekend the Swedish kayak fishing championship or SM took place. I managed to win the whole competition which I am super proud of. It was my first big win and here is how it went down:

Day 1 we were fishing perch, and to fill the scoreboard you needed 5 perch over 20 cm. I started fishing around some structure at 5 meters of depth with a lot of baitfish around. It did not take long before I got my first perch of the day of 28 cm, so i decided to stay in the same area. About 20 minutes later I got my second perch of the day and it was a chunky one of 37 cm.. After that fish I went in and checked the competition scoreboard and it seemed like fishing was quite tricky this day, so I decided to stick to same area. After 2 more hours without a strike, except from a crawfish that decided to pinch my jig, I switched areas.

After my switch of area I managed to catch another 37 cm perch pretty quickly. I was happy for a while but after this the weather changed and made the fishing even harder. After fishing for a while in that area without getting a single strike I changed to a smaller spinner tail-bait and got two smaller fish of 26 and 23 cm. My scoreboard was full but I did not manage to get any uppgrades. All in all I was parking at 4th place after the first day.

Day 2 was pike day with the target of catching 3 pike over 50 cm. It was really a slow day but after 4 hours of fishing without a strike I got my first pike on the scoreboard! A small one of 51 cm. I was thinking that now I am contending againg and took another cast. Strike again! This time it was bigger! A 71 cm pike for the scoreboard.

15 minutes later when I was fishing a chatterbait inside the grass at 0.5 meters of depth a big pike came out of nowhere and inhaled my chatterbait just beside the kayak. I was in the middle of the reeds and knew that I had to net the fish immediatly in order to be able to chatch it. I managed to net the fish and a 88 cm pike was added to the scoreboard. With a full scoreboard I really had a chance!

I managed to catch two more pike in the next 15 minutes culling my smallest pike of 51 cm to a bigger one of 61 cm.

I continued to fish for another 4 hours but the window of opportunity was gone. No more strikes today.

Back at shore I started to realise that everyone had a slow day and I started to think that I might have a chance to keep a good position. When the competetion management announced the winner it was me on the top! For me this was really a dream come true to win one of the big kayak fishing competitions here in Sweden. I want to send a huge thanks to all the sponsors and to the Swedish kayak fishing club for arranging this awesome event. Also a huge thanks to all of the anglers making it such a great experience.