For Two Spoons

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

Fishing tales

What angler doesn’t have a heartbeat when he sees a fish playing or hunting on the water. Immediately I want to throw a hook with a bait there in the hope of quick luck … Something similar happened to me on the Gulf of Finland, in a long channel near the village of Pikhtovoe. While the boat slowly moved through the shallow water, splashes from pike throws were heard from left and right every now and then.

There were so many of them that it seemed that the water around was literally stuffed with these toothy predators. I even saw their yellow fins flashing several times. One involuntarily thought: throw the spoon to where they hunted, and drag one after another! But here's the bad luck: all around impassable, without a single lumen "blanket" of grass. It turns out as in the well-known proverb: "The elbow is close, but you won't bite." So I slowly drifted along the channel, hoping to find at least small mirrors of clear water, where I could throw a spoon or a wobbler. Alas, I couldn't find such places.

This continued until, having rounded another wall of reeds, I saw in an inflatable boat a middle-aged fisherman, sitting among a continuous carpet of aquatic plants. He caught on spinning, and standing. I watched him in surprise. It’s even very interesting: how does he manage to throw a spoon into this lace made of intertwined stems of aquatic plants without hooks?

It is clear that one should hardly approach it for the sake of interest, since the overwhelming majority of anglers are extremely negative about such actions. However, I also wanted to look at his unusual angling. Therefore, although with great difficulty, I led the boat through the green "jungle" and settled down nearby, obliquely from the angler so that the spinning and manipulation with him could be seen.

While I was getting settled, the fisherman, meanwhile, caught at least a kilogram of pike. I follow him closely. He, glancing at the stalks of plants sticking out of the water, threw the spoon into the thick of it and immediately began posting. Once, second, third, fourth …

Only after eight o'clock he instantly pulled the spoon out of the water, took it in his hands, held it for a very short time and threw it again. Moreover, exactly in the place from where he just pulled it out. As soon as she touched the water, a bite followed, and after a short struggle, another pike found itself in the fisherman's net. Having removed the fish, he did not immediately cast the spoon for the next trophy, but for some time (although not for long) conjured over it, after which it again flew into the thicket of grass.

The operation was repeated … Only this time the pike was caught, probably only after fifteen casts. What was especially surprising in this fishing - why the spoon, being in the very thick of water plants, did not catch on them. After all, the hooks of the hooks of the spoon in such situations are a constant and inevitable scourge of all spinners.

And for this angler, everything went smoothly. Why? I was lost in conjectures, but I was lucky … After forty minutes the fisherman finished fishing, put a spinning rod into the boat, took out a cage with pikes from the water and, slowly raking it out of dense vegetation, got out into the clear water not far from me.

When he turned the boat around, directing it in the direction opposite to me, I could not resist and asked:

- Tell me, for the sake of interest, why did you fish in the impassable grassy thicket, where an ordinary angler is not able to throw any tackle?

I was sure that he would dismiss him in annoyance or just mutter something incomprehensible in response. But he, surprisingly, lowered the oars, took the spoons in his hand and explained:

- I have two such completely identical spinners. But one of them is without a tee. Here I am throwing it into the grass. It is clear that without a hook it does not cling to the grass. And when I leave, I follow her closely. As soon as I notice the attack of the pike, I immediately pull the spoon out of the water and immediately instead of this I hook another one, but with a tee. Naturally, seeing the prey that had escaped again, the pike immediately grabs it.

On that we parted. Looking after him, I thought that the resourcefulness of true anglers knows no bounds. After all, they manage to successfully fish where other fishermen would not have thought of it.