Daydreams in my hands

All our passions and interests is a result of miraculous Something, impossible coincidence of subtle events and impressions that turns on at some moment a misterious machinery of our hearts and forces our minds to do things.
It wouldn’t become one of my little daydreams, that beautifull spotty creature, if I had not once visited a distant Carpathian village on the Black Cheremosh river. We were there for a rafting some two or three years ago, don’t remember exactly though all gear wheels of my memory seem to be well lubricated. Usually such events are arrange on a weekend and thus it was that time. On a Sunday morning I decided to go for a walk along the small side branch of the big river. Really small one, it was narrow, two meters at the widest places. I knew that few kilometers that direction there should be a village and I hoped to see something new and unusual for my semi-urban mind.
There he was staying with a fishing tackle, a plain country-man dressed in an old jacket and rather coarse breetches, his feets in an very ordinary pair of rubber boots. I couldn’t just pass him by and notwithstaning that I’ve been not so good those days in getting into contact with new people than I am now it turned out to be quite easy and interesting to chat with this man. His name was Ivan if I’m not mistaken. Very open and lively dude. After some while and answering his questions on where I am from and what I am doing there I asked him if he was lucky that day and cought some fish His eyes blinked with a momentary proud:
- Yes, I got one…
- Could you show me? Is it a trout?
- Yep.
And I see as now as he gets out from the inner pocket of his jacket a fish which is not wrapped in any paper or anything else That Was unusual. And it was a trout, the first just-cought trout I ever seen.

Then were 2 years of me dreaming about going somewhere there and trying to do the same, to catch a trout.
And 2 weeks ago I’ve done it. In Verhnye Synyovydne village, where two rivers meet each other: Stryj and Opir.
This time I decided to try a novelty – to use grasshopers as a bate, have never done it before. That turned out to have its strong sides. When fishing with a worms as a bate you get bothered with a lot of fry and sometimes it’s funny but other moments is makes you angry. While trying grasshopers you get much less rises but fish are bigger, minnow is not able to eat the whole grasshoper, that is harder than biting a piece of a worm.
So here it is, my first river trout from the small pool at the side stream of the river:

Not that big but it provided a good fight.

It couldn’t resist a tempation of getting a juicy red worm on the hook.

In some 10 minutes at the same place I’ve got one more, a bit smaller but I’ve made a closer pictures of it so it is possible to see how beautifull they are:

And they have very sharp teeth, even these small ones quite easily bites off the regular line.

On the open air they become weak very very fast so it is needed to get a trout off the hook immediately if you want to return it back to the river without a demage.

At the background you can see a place where I was lucky.

So, many thank to Summer which keeps its promises

Like in a famous song
Summer moved on
And the way it goes
You can’t tag along

Almost moved on. Tomorrow is the last summer weekend and I’m going there again with one of my best friends - Artem. Will try to teach him some fishing, hope he’ll like it and hope the luck will be there.

Carpathian fishing

I’m keen on fishing since being a mere child, some 5 years old as far as I remember when my father took me first with him to catch some fish From those days I can’t even count how many times I’ve  been in different places, different rivers, ponds, lakes, alone or with some friends relaxing in this perfect for me way. But never been fishing in mountains. Living in the area where rivers are moderately slow and fishing is more like sitting in a chair and waiting when it bites I was wondering how it feels to fish in mountains with swift cold waters where one needs to walk alot and change places.

So I did it finally, pack my things and went to Carpathian Mountains for 2 days, my 2 ultralight rods besides me, my knife and some food The river is Opir which can be quite dangerous in Spring when rains are falling and large amount of waters are collected from the mountains into this arteria. The week before when in the eastern mountain regions of Ukraine there was a flood never seen for some few decades at least (36 people are officialy dead from that disaster) we were rafting this river and it was really dangerous. I will describe this in one of my next posts. But this time it was hardly to recognize that few meters deep fast muddy flow, it was rather little nice and clean:

Opir river (august 2008)

Of course I read a lot about how to get a fish in such a river and all those folks advices could be summed up to kinda of “You need to use artificial flies, very ultra-light rods, fish is very very very carefull there and you’ll hardly catch one, bla bla bla”. Me is not like to listen all that bullshit, so I got simple rods I’m taking when going fishing on my bycicle, pair of very compact ones that can easily be packed into the rucksack and put on my back + can with worms, nothing more.

It appeared surprisingly simple, funny and interesting to fish there. Almost each time you throw a worm into the water you get some fish. Most of them were unfamiliar for me or at least I only knew about them from books, so was real fun. Fishes were not too big and I never got no trout that weekend (what of course was intended) but for the first time I was happy.

Here are some examples of fishes I caught:

At the background you can see the pier of the broken by the flood briedge, a perfect place for fishes to hide.

A bigger one

All fishes were released

I like this one. They are predators and can grow quite big and strong.

Our fish resources are quite exhausted and environment is polluted so it is good for nature to let all fishes go untill you are hungry

So, that’s it. I learned a lot and next time will be prepared much more better for fishing in mountains, hope to catch a bigger fish.

Ah, almost forgot to paste a photo of me fishing

Yeah, it's me A bit unshaved... but this is how it should be in the wild nature )