Viking Valhalla: A sea angling blog : Northern Stars, Arctic Adventure!

I've managed very little fishing since my last post in August 2015 unfortunately.

A new job that I had to learn from scratch has took up all of my time since. Only dreams of my forthcoming cod bashing trip to Bodo in Norway were to keep me sane during this time away from fishing! They say be patient in life and good things will come and so it came to be, what a trip this turned out to be!

I live near Newcastle and the cheapest, nearest and easiest flight to Bodo is from Edinburgh, via Oslo and then onto Bodo with Norwegian air.

Arriving in Bodo at 7pm it soon became clear that our main tools for the expedition, namely the rods hadn't turned up! Now this happens to me every time I go to Norway so no panic, they normally turn up early the next day by courier at your digs which they did at 10am to our great relief! It was now time to bash some cod!

Saltstraumen Brygge, has all mod cons, fully fitted kitchen, dining area, en suite bathroom, massive tv and lounge area with outstanding views to. Very handy heated filleting room, dry room for wet clothing and a dozen chest freezers for your bait and fish. All you need plus lots of great locations to fish from within a 50 mile radius plus some right on the door step to which hold massive cod, coalfish and halibut.

We stayed for one week mainly fishing from two marks near the apartments and a mark near Bodo about 20 miles back up the road. During the week fishing was awesome with cod to 41lb, Halibut to 21lb, Coalfish to 17lb, Wolfish to 15lb and some cracking Haddock to. The Northern lights made an appearance on the last night capping of the best shore fishing trip I've ever had the privilige to be on.

Bait is easy, bluey, herring, mackerel and mussel are all you need. Standard shore fishing gear from the UK is fine but you will need to up your mono traces to 80lb at least as the Norwegian fish have some serious teeth and extremely sharp gill rakers that quickly damage line and fingers!

Tides are extremely strong on the flood and are often unfishable around Saltstraumen so the ebb tide down to low is the best time to fish, on the open coast at Bodo and to the south of Saltstraumen fishing is possible at all times weather permitting.

Below are some fantastic pics for you to browse......I've also made a slideshow as there are so many great pics, check out the slideshow on you tube to, you'll find it at the bottom of this post.

Highlights of the trip, a 41lb cod and then a 30lb cod in two casts for Gregg Norris, Gregg helped me to land my monster cod of 49lb a few years ago and it was fantastic to repay the favour by helping to land both of his awesome cod on this trip. A trip up to Bodo saw us land over 600lb of fish in a hectic eight hour session with some clonkers among them.

Just to add most fish went back ok however we did keep the odd one that wasn't going to live, unfortunately this is what happens when you stick 8/0 hooks into fish. Having said that I hope you enjoy the pics.....

Anticipation ....