The Saimaa Canal is situated approximately 15 kilometres from Lappeenranta, near Nuijamaa, and is a last minute replacement for this year’s World Championships, which were due to be held in Russia. It’s a popular match fishing venue having hosted the 1995 World Champs. The stretch covers the area between Soskua Lock and Kansola Bridge, Although it is Finland’s most consistent match length, it can also be the most difficult.

The Canal is approximately 60 metres wide and carries large vessels between Finland and Russia. Due to the size of these ships it means the locks on the canal are also large and their constant opening and closing produces strong currents. When one of these larger vessels pass by, the water level can drop and rise by as much as 80 centimetres, resulting in a severe backwash hitting the bank, which can cause problems for any unsuspecting angler! With regard to this we have been informed that boat traffic will be held back during the weekend of the competition, and therefore shouldn’t cause too many problems, but it could probably be a major hiccup during the practice sessions in the run up.

The banks are lined with rocks/boulders that continue down into the water. The depth from the bank becomes steadily deeper leveling out around 6 metres at approximately 13/14 metres. The main species are roach, silver bream and bream. There is also bleak, as well as pelecus cultratus, a kind of freshwater swordfish
see http://www.briancoad.com/Species%20Accounts/Pelecus.htm

The fish is quite a curiosity in Finnish waters and is usually caught during June and July (see picture above). However a match situation will see roach as the main target species, while some silvers’ and bream could show in small numbers.

Simon is a resident of Helsinki and fishes for Team Helsinki. He'll be on the bank helping the Finnish Internationals during the Champs and will hopefully be sending us some reports and pictures of how the week's practice went.

One of the Finnish Internationals shows off his impressive range of top kits on the boulder strewn Saimaa Canal. An adjustable seating system will be an essential item for these World Champs.

The standard approach will be to target the many resident roach at around 8 and 13 metres. A successful feeding plan on these two lines should see roach coming steadily to the right anglers and should ultimately guarantee a good individual and team placing, target weight should be between 1-2 kilos, however if bream feed then section wins may require up to 4 kilos, maybe higher.
These two lines of attack will see rigs made up from 0.08 mm main line, 0.6 mm hook length, 24 hooks and a 0.4 g float if the fishing gets hard to 0.10mm/0.8mm with20/22 hooks and .5-.6gr floats. On days when the boat traffic and lock usage is heavy you’ll need to step up to a one-gram float, but nothing heavier. Bream are normally found at about 14.5 metres and it will be interesting to see what happens when limited to just 13 metres. Last summer when fishing at 13 metres the bream didn’t show! Again a fairly standard rig set up for the bream could be anything from 0.10 mm main line, 0.08mm hook length, 18 hook upwards with a maximum 2 gram float. This approach secured a number of section wins in previous Finnish Championships as well as the 1995 World Champs.

It’s wise to adopt a dark groundbait mix for the roach on this venue which could be 1 part Sensas 3000 Noire, 1 part 3000 Gardonia and half a part of Epiceine, as long as you add 20-50% of leam before making up the balls. Joker is then added to the mix. For bream a general mix would be something like 1 part Sensas 3000 Etang, 1 part 3000 Bremes and 1 part PV1. Bloodworm and casters can be added for extra performance. The best hook baits for roach are pinkie and bloodworm and for bream a bunch of bloodworm or maggot.

Fishing the canal can be consistently tricky throughout the season, although the beginning of the results in summer normally see improved weights up to 3 kilos, whereas on other occasions a kilo is enough to get you in the top three. There are plenty of fish in the canal and you can catch several kilos of roach and silver bream over 3 hours when you’re fishing alone, however the fish become wary when the banks get crowded and noisey with match anglers.

Match results to date are a little sketchy with only one small competition off which I’m unable to obtain the result. It will therefore be quite difficult to keep you updated with how the venue is performing as I believe there will not be many, if any, matches fished there leading up to the championships. Of course, if I do hear of any matches to be arranged, I will naturally keep you informed! I do, however, believe that the first time the venue will see any sort of pressure will be when teams gather to practice prior to the world champs.

I have attached a link outlining the main town, Lappeenranta, which may prove useful to those coming to the event http://www.lappeenranta.fi/index.html.
It contains information in both English, French and German.