Lucky Boy

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

Fishing tales

When my constant companion and namesake Alexander Rykov and I went fishing, his eight-year-old grandson Yegor followed us. He had already been several times on summer fishing, and now he wanted to fish in winter. And in vain did we explain to the boy that it was the height of winter now, and therefore it was very cold, that the lake was far away and that we would have to go to it along a snowy forest road.

When we got to the lake, it turned out that the ice was everywhere at least 40 centimeters thick, so Rykov decided not to drill a hole for his grandson, but to plant him right next to the lumberjack's ice hole, from which they took water. Then, shaking off the snow from the nearest vine bush, Rykov cut out a half-meter stick from a branch: he tied a fishing line to it and fixed a jig at its end. Having arranged the boy at the ice-hole, he left him a little bloodworm. Egor learned how to hook it on a hook during his summer fishing.

When I showed the boy one of the simplest techniques for playing the jig, after my manipulations he said:

- You know, Uncle Sasha, I will fish as best I can.

The fish pecked badly: rarely and very reluctantly. And not only here. And only tiny brushes and okushki came across. In vain we changed the jigs and attachments for them, nothing helped. Having nothing to do, I decided to check how Yegor was doing, although I was sure that he hadn't caught anything at all.

What was my surprise when I saw some pretty decent perches and roach on the ice near him. In any case, Rykov and I did not have a single such fish. I returned to him and told him about Yegor's successes, but he just grunted in disbelief.

But his distrust quickly dissipated when he heard his grandson screams:

- Grandfather, grandfather, come here, help!

We rushed to him, and, running up, we saw that the boy was barely holding the rod bent into an arc. Rykov took it from Yegor's hands and after a few moments pulled a half-kilogram perch out of the hole. Going home, we compared the catch: the boy had three times more fish than Rykov and me. And the fish turned out to be larger than ours.

Later I realized what the secret was. Egor was fishing in an ice-hole, into which lumberjacks poured water from washing dishes. It was a kind of constant bait. Therefore, the fish kept in this place. The boy's small stature, apparently, did not frighten her, hence such luck …