Is It The Weather?

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

Fishing tales

On Lake Vuoksa near Priozersk there are even a dime a dozen spinningists at any time. Fortunately, getting there is not difficult at all. Going fishing on this lake, I have been staying for many years in a small village on the shore, with a local old-timer - an unsurpassed hunter and fisherman Vasily Kuzmich Evseenkov. True, for everyone in the district (and for me too), he is just Kuzmich.

Every time you look at an army of fishermen in droves (especially on weekends) besieging the lake and throwing spoons, wobblers, twisters, vibrotails, poppers and all kinds of homemade products into the water, you are involuntarily surprised at their modest catches.

Needless to say, small things: roach, okushki, brushes, they take the bait regularly. But after all, every angler in the carcass conceals the hope of catching a weighty trophy. Especially spinning players. And to do this, oh, how difficult, and often completely impossible.

In conversations, the losers referred either to the lack of fish, then to the lack of knowledge of the places where this very fish is kept, then they complained that, they say, they did not guess with the bait. But most of all there were references to bad weather.

For the first time on my next trip to Vuoksa, I invited my relative Vadim. He has long been asking to go fishing in our company with Kuzmich. And now such an opportunity turned up - and we are on the lake.

Over the evening tea, the conversation, of course, was exclusively about fishing. Since Vadim and I are spinners, we were primarily interested in spinning fishing. I shared my observations of failed anglers and voiced the inevitable question out loud: what's the matter?

- Maybe they can't choose the shape and color of the baits? For example, in spinners it is of no small importance, - suggested Vadim.

- You, hovering, are very much mistaken, - Kuzmich answered with a grin, looking at him and, after a pause, continued: - There are as many craftsmen to catch with spoons and other stuff, but not everyone can throw a suitable spoon or other trick into the right place …

- So not everyone … - Vadim disagreed.

I kept quiet, because I knew very well that it was pointless to object to Kuzmich: he was always right.

- Tomorrow we will see who will catch how, - the owner of the house finished the conversation.

The morning was sunny and windy. The north wind drove high waves with foamy crests across the lake. I sat down at the oars, Vadim sat at the bow of the boat, Kuzmich at the stern. Having sailed about thirty meters from the shore, we moved along the wall of cattails and reeds.

- Choose a place and throw it, - looking at Vadim, Kuzmich suggested.

Vadim chose a small pool in a calm place, put a spinner on the spinning line, and the fishing began. The first cast he made along the thickets of grass and began the wiring. Alas, empty. Second, third …, fifth, tenth. The same result. We must pay tribute to Vadim, he did not give up. Instead of a spinner, I put a wobbler, then a twister, then a popper, then I will spin again. He also changed the rhythm of the wiring.

After several dozen fruitless attempts, the unsuccessful fisherman concluded:

- Of course, sunny weather, and even the north wind, what a bite!

- You are very good with your tongue, - Kuzmich shook his head, - it's a pity that the fish doesn't take from you.

With these words, he took out a spoon-spoon from his bag. I have repeatedly seen how Kuzmich used this homemade spoon to fish. It was not only in name, but in essence was a spoon. I even suspect that it was a cleverly curved ordinary aluminum teaspoon. But without a handle. In its narrow part, a tee is attached, on one of the hooks of which a bunch of gray threads was strung.

Tying the spoon to the line, Kuzmich turned to me:

- Row up to that cape.

He pointed to a small promontory, about fifty meters from where we were. And when we got there, a new command followed:

- Row slowly along the grass, - and he threw the spoon directly in front of him.

We did not swim even a hundred meters when a bite followed, and the first trophy - a half-kilogram pike fluttered at the bottom of the boat. And then, despite the midday heat and the ever-increasing north wind, the pikes nevertheless pecked. Within an hour, Kuzmich caught four more pikes: from a kilogram to two. And there were also several retirements.

Vadim could only be surprised:

- Lurid baubles, bad weather, and Vasily Kuzmich has five pikes, but I, on the most modern baits, have not a single bite! - he shared with me when we returned from fishing.

“Maybe the whole thing is in the bunch of threads on the hook,” I encouraged him, “or maybe, as Kuzmich said:“We need to throw the right spoon in the right place?”

Vadim said nothing. And silence, as you know, is a sign of consent.

Alexander Nosov