How To Feed Fish In Winter - What They Don't Teach At School

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Fishing tales

Schoolchildren from a neighboring village study at our village school on the other side of the river. Most of them walk along the bridge, but a boy of about twelve, as I noticed, returning from school, for some reason often crosses the river on the ice. Sitting by the hole with a jig, at first I did not pay attention to him, but when this was repeated several times, I became interested and decided to watch him on occasion …

On that cloudy day, despite the severe frost, the boy, as usual, descended the slope onto the ice and, reaching the middle of the river, stopped under a bridge. Taking an object out of his knapsack, he bent down and hit it several times on the ice. Then he got up, put the item back in his knapsack and continued on his way to the shore, home. I watched the student manipulate two more times. Moreover, as I noticed, he always came to the same place. Intrigued, after his next departure, I went there, intending to find out: what was he doing there? I easily found this place and found only a hole half-covered with snow. And nothing more. Why did the boy come here so many times? Trying to answer this question, I carefully examined the hole, wandered around it, but saw nothing special. Perhaps I'll have to ask him about it.

The next day was a day off. Since the student always came to the hole, only returning from school, today I did not expect him. However, contrary to my assumption, he still appeared around noon. But not with a knapsack, but with a shoulder bag, a winter fishing rod and a plastic box. He sat down on a box, unwound a fishing rod, took a box out of his bag, rummaged in it. Then I put the bait on the hook, then knocked something on the ice and lowered the line into the hole. And literally in a few seconds he pulled a fish out of the river.

There was no less than a hundred meters between us, so I could not really make out what trophy the young angler had fished out, but I could assume that it was a pretty decent fish. Having removed the prey from the hook, he again lowered the baited line into the hole and almost immediately pulled out a new fish. And then, to my great surprise, the bite followed the bite … At this point I could not resist and hurried to such a lucky angler. Of course, I was eager to find out: why does he have such a lively nibble? After all, two dozen weighty perches were already lying on the ice near the young fisherman's hole.

He did not deny and explained that, returning from school, he comes to the hole and knocks on the ice with a mallet. Then he throws food there. Perch, according to him, get used to such feeding and immediately gather at the hole to knock. And today he once again took advantage of this - he planted bloodworms on the hook, and part of the perches became his prey.

- Who taught you this? - I was surprised.

- Nobody. In the summer, looking at how adult uncles feed the fish, I thought: what if we feed it in winter?

- Why exactly under the bridge?

- Because the fish are always spinning here, especially the perches, they hope that something will fall from the bridge.

Aloud, I praised the boy for his resourcefulness, but I thought to myself that with his observation and natural ingenuity, he would achieve a lot not only on fishing, but, I am sure, in life.