They say winning the Latvian Championship is difficult. But coming back a year later and proving that your previous victory was not a coincidence is even harder.
We did it — for the second year in a row, we are Latvian champions in boat spinning.
In 2025, we won the Latvian championship title, while the main goal for the 2026 season was to defend it.
And in my opinion, the second victory is, in some ways, even more valuable than the first.
When you are already a champion, your competitors know what to expect from you. At the same time, you have to find new solutions, keep learning, analyze your mistakes, and continue developing.
An Entire Season with One Team
This season was also special because we competed throughout the entire Latvian Championship with one team and without a second boat.
In team sport fishing, this is a very important factor.
Having two teams means being able to test different bodies of water, depths, lures, fish behavior, and promising areas simultaneously during training. It provides a much larger flow of information.
We did not have that opportunity.
So, in reality, we had half the information and twice as much work to do ourselves.
There were stages where, even during the competition, we had to completely rethink our initial plan. After the first day, we had to analyze not only our own results but also the performance of our competitors, understand where we had gone wrong, and sometimes start the next morning almost from a blank sheet.
In my opinion, these are exactly the moments that best demonstrate what sport fishing is really about.
You do not always win because you know where the fish are before the competition starts. Very often, you win because you realize faster that your original plan is no longer working and are able to adapt in time.
Strong Competitors Make You Stronger
This season once again showed us how important strong competition is in sport.
When there are teams around you that consistently deliver strong results, you cannot afford to stop improving.
Competitors very quickly reveal your weaknesses.
If someone is consistently faster or more consistent than you under certain conditions, the question becomes — why?
What do they see that we don't?
What are we doing too slowly?
Which techniques do we lack experience in?
Is the problem finding fish, electronics, lure presentation, or tactical decisions?
And then the most interesting part begins — the work.
That is why I want to thank all our competitors for this season. Strong competition forces you to keep learning and become better.
“Well, I’m the Expert!”
A special thank you to my teammate Mark.
He is not the kind of person who talks a lot about his work or tells everyone how much he has done. Because of that, he sometimes receives less public attention than he actually deserves.
But within the team, he does a huge amount of work.
Mark has one great phrase:
“Well, I’m the expert!”
And honestly, I have nothing to argue with there. 😄
My job is to find the fish, get us to the right spot, and position the boat correctly. Once that is done, the expert knows what to do next.
In sport fishing, a team is not simply two people sitting in the same boat. Over time, each person starts to understand the other's actions almost without words. And this kind of mutual understanding can be decisive in difficult competition situations.
Lake Burtnieks Put Us Through the Full Test
The final stage of the Latvian Championship on Lake Burtnieks deserves an entirely separate article.
In three years of competitive fishing, it seems this was the first time a single body of water decided to test us in almost every possible way.
Already on the first day of competition, our Panoptix stopped working.
Then came a submerged phone, a dead car battery, and a broken GPS watch.
At one point, it felt as if Burtnieks was simply asking us: how tough are we really?
But the most interesting part was not the technical problems.
Much more important was the fact that the lake forced us to change our usual approach, look for different solutions, and adapt to the situation.
I will write separately about this stage and the lessons we learned from Burtnieks, because it was one of the most valuable lessons of the entire season.
Sport Fishing Is Not Just About the Result on the Leaderboard
From the outside, competitive fishing can sometimes look simple: a boat, modern fishing electronics, spinning rods, and fish.
In reality, hundreds of hours on the water stand behind every result.
Training, studying bodies of water, searching for fish, analyzing weather and wind, adjusting electronics, choosing lures, failed experiments, and then more experiments.
And on top of all that come work and family.
That is why I especially want to thank our families, loved ones, and colleagues.
High-level sport requires a huge amount of time, energy, and resources. Without people who understand and support you, completing a season like this would be much more difficult.
The work we invested this year was not in vain.
2025 + 2026 — Two Latvian Championship Titles
🏆 Latvian Champions 2025
🏆 Latvian Champions 2026
Two years in a row.
And yet the most interesting thing is that after this season, the feeling is not: “Now we know everything.”
Quite the opposite.
The more you learn in sport fishing, the more you realize how much you still do not know.
And perhaps that is one of the main reasons why this sport is so addictive.
The Next Goal — World Championship in Hungary
The Latvian Championship is over, but our 2026 competitive season is not finished yet.
Ahead of us is the main event of this year — the World Boat Spinning Championship in Hungary.
The Latvian national team has a very strong lineup this year, and it is especially exciting that the people we competed against throughout the Latvian Championship season are now becoming our teammates.
Yesterday, we were competitors.
Now we have one flag and one common goal. 🇱🇻
The Latvian championship title has been defended.
Now it is time to prepare for Hungary. 🇱🇻🎣
RESTBOAT.LV — Fishing and Boat Spinning in Latvia
Competition experience does not stay only within sport. What we learn in the Latvian Championship and international competitions — finding fish, working with modern fishing electronics, using LiveScope technology, positioning the boat, and presenting lures correctly — is also applied in our everyday work on the water.
RESTBOAT.LV offers guided fishing trips and individual training in Latvia for both experienced spinning anglers and people who want to learn modern pike and zander fishing from a boat.
The goal is not simply to catch a fish. The goal is to understand why the fish is in a particular place and how to catch it again.
