As promised a report about the PENN Iceland Festival in association with Cordes Travel. As my colleague wasn´t able to join the festival as representative of Pure Fishing/Penn, I took his place. For these important and big events we will always try to send one of us as official representative for the price giving and for answering questions.
Nice cod
So in this case, I was the lucky one and at the 8th of May we gathered at Schiphol airport for our trip to Iceland. Raffie and Linda of Cordes Travel were very busy with the organization at Schiphol as we were flying with a group of 70 people. All of them very excited to go to a beautiful country as Iceland. After a good and comfortable trip to Reykjavik, we took a domestic flight to Isafjordur in the North West of Iceland. Nice to see that the aircraft was full and only with anglers, all in a good mood.
Isafjordur Airport
The idea behind the Festival is to catch the biggest fish per day but also the overall biggest fish gets a price. The first price for the overall winner is a free participation in next years event. The daily prices were or a Sargus reel or a TRQ rod.
The biggest fish during this edition was directly caught on the first day, a 45 kilo Halibut. Well done! We, Raffie, Linda, Rik and myself caught quit a few nice fish, cod, wolffish, whiting and a very nice monkfish. Of course we as sponsor and Cordes as organizer we didn´t participate for the prizes.
Wolffish for Raffie
Linda with a monkfish
Beautiful days
After 3 days of beautiful weather and nice fishing days the conditions changed. The predictions were bad, with capital BAD! We were about the experience a blizzard. Imagine this a blizzard in the month of May, even the locals were surprised about this. And indeed the predictions were right, we were not able to fish for 2 days due to the storm and snow. This was very sad for all the anglers and for the event in general, nevertheless we had a good time with the group and with the guys who we shared the bungalow with.
Rik outside during the blizzard
On the last day of our trip the weather was back to normal, a bit chilly but no snow and no wind. So we, Rik and I, went out of bed at 4.30 AM and went fishing for the last few hours that were left of this trip. Other anglers were fishing from about midnight untill 10 o´clock in the morning and they were fishing at open sea. That was the right decision we found out later. These guys caught 7 cod over 20 kilo and about 20 15 kilo fish. Incredible!!!! Rik and myself, we stayed in the Fjord and had a lot of fun catching quit a bit of cod up to 100cm.
To fish at open sea was the right decission....
We were only able to fish until noon because the whole group would be picked up for a ride to the airport. From there we took the domestic flight to Reykjavik again where we had an excellent meal. After a short night we went back to Amsterdam. Despite of the bad weather we had an excellent week and as far as I know the participants had the same feeling about this.
I want to thank Cordes Travel for a well organized event and PENN will be sponsor again next year.
Regards,
Robert
