Someone Else's Catch

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

Fishing tales

In the evening, after watching the weather forecast on TV, which foreshadowed the next cloudless, calm weather with moderate frost, I decided to go fishing in the morning. No sooner said than done, and with the first train I arrived at the lake on the Karelian Isthmus. Having put five girders in promising places, he began to fish with a jig. Of course, not forgetting to observe the signal flags of the girders from time to time.

The mormyshka pecked mediocre. There were fish habitual for winter fishing: small (with a finger the size) okushka, roach, ruff, and even one rotan was caught. But closer to noon, the bite cut off! It could be assumed that the fish stopped taking, anticipating a change in the weather. Indeed, contrary to the forecast, a sharp northeasterly wind blew, the sky was covered with a veil of clouds, and sleet poured down. Most of the fishermen did not hesitate to leave the lake that had become so inhospitable. I held on for about an hour until I turned into a snowman. There was no point in fishing further, and I set off to collect the girders.

I started from the farthest. It was empty, as were the other two. But on the fourth, an amazing thing happened … Taking out the fishing line from the water, I suddenly saw in the hole a small round piece of polystyrene. The line on this foam is intertwined with the line of my girder. Since a piece of polystyrene did not pass into the hole, I had to suffer a lot, cutting it into pieces with a knife. It turned out that the round piece of polystyrene is a greatly reduced copy of a mug for summer fishing with live bait, but altered specifically for winter fishing. It was a tackle known to fishermen - a zherlitsa circle.

Having freed myself from the foam, I began to choose the line, and when it got taut, I felt a strong jerk. On the other end was a clearly large fish. Since the fishing line was stretched like a string, then, fearing a break, at first it gave slack, then gradually began to pull towards itself. I must say that the fish resisted desperately: it pulled the line to one side or the other, then suddenly froze, not allowing itself to budge. The fight lasted twenty minutes. Finally, I managed to bring my tired prey to the hole. When the head appeared from the water, I even gasped in surprise: it was a huge pike. Hooking it up with a hook, I somehow dragged the fish into the hole and threw it on the ice. The pike was at least two kilograms. Only after that, looking at such an unexpected trophy, I gradually began to realize how lucky I was.

Apparently, the pike stole the tackle from a gaping angler or simply snatched it from his hands. But how did the zherlitsa circle fall into the water: after all, the diameter of the circle is much larger than the diameter of an ordinary hole! So the hole was wide enough. What, then, was it drilled with? Another mystery … The pike caught on the hook dragged the tackle across the reservoir until it was overwhelmed by the line of my girder. Which stopped her. And I returned home with … someone else's catch.