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 )
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