Best Cod Fishing in the World?
After a 2000 km long journey from Askim in Östfold to Finnmark in the North, we reached Söröya, and Fiskarboden fishing center, our final destination.
Five good fishing friends from Baastad Sea fishing club, Henning Meyer, Odd Larson, Morten Ekhaugen, Kjetil Langvatn and Morten Hvam were early up the first day rigging rods and it wasn’t long before they were on their way to the Loppehavet with Kjetil (mr Fish finder) behind the wheel, it didn’t take long before they were into huge numbers of fish just outside the Halibut shallows.
After the boat is positioned we get the signal for lines down, and it doesn’t take more than a few seconds before the first shout of ‘fish on’ echoes around the boat. A quick glance at the fish finder shows there is a huge layer with cod from 30m – 100m deep, that’s a 70 m thick layer with cod from 5 – 20 kg in weight !
From earlier experience of fishing at Söröya we know what tackle is needed, so all of us are tackled up with a 600 g “Svenskepilk”, a ‘Swedish pirk’ with a Mustad 3551-DT Treble at the business end.
After 3 hours of fast action my pirk stops dead on the way down at 35 meters. I start pumping and manage to take in a few meters onto the reel, and suddenly it stops dead again with a couple of heavy knocks and then begins to run, stripping line off my reel. I understood right away from earlier trips that this was no 15 kg fish and after 10-12 minutes of tug ‘o’ war Kjetil was standing ready with the gaff, and we got our first look at the lady, as she surfaced: A huge spawning ready female cod. Kjetil does his job and hauls the lady on board, where we immediately begin to guess her weight! We all agree she must be over 40 kg.
A couple of hours, and many cod later, back at the fish delivery centre at Sörvaer harbour, the scales reveal the lady’s true weight 41.72 kilo’s, for those of you that are still not in the metric system that’s a massive 92 lbs ! 147 cm long and a girth of 114 cm. It was at exactly the same place last year that I caught the largest of 36.74 kg, a fish that secured me the prize for best cod in the Norwegian fishing magazines ‘Alt om Fiske’ fishing competition for 2011.
We took lots of big fish in our week at Söröya, we had 30 fish over 20 kg and a total collective weight of a little over 5000 kilos!
This is an Eldorado for sea fishing that has to be experienced…
Best wishes
Morten Hvam
Note: At the time of publishing, the cod caught by Morten Hvam is
a new Norwegian and European record
at 41,72 Kg