06-02-24

Friday

The main goal of today

It's been a while now since the last entry of my diary. Meanwhile I hope you've enjoyed the nice winter picture on the front page. Today that view would look exactly the same maybe except that the ice is covered with snow. And the ice is probably thicker. For you out there in the foreign countries it might be a little difficult to understand my concern about the weather. Isn't it normal with snow, ice and cold during winters? And in Sweden for crying out loud!
No, not for the last couple of ten years it isn't. Not in my little corner of the southeast end of Sweden. This is the harshest, coldest and most snowy winter since 1982 and it just goes on and on. But the last week it has been a little warmer (that is zero or one or two degree above) so I decided to go for it.

Here I am on way to the coast, a 20 kilometer drive from the deep woods where I live.  My purpose of today's fishing trip certainly wasn't to catch a lot of pikes. It was to get a bite. I felt it to be a both humble and realistic approach.  But more important still was to spend the day a-fishing. To find a place where you could enter the water a-wading. And go a-fly casting.  The latter activity is so fun in it's own right that I would be content with that. Almost.  It wouldn't work for me to go around casting in a park or a football ground. That wouldn't be fun.  Specially if they were playing a match. (When I say football I mean soccer)

One day last week, on a day off, just like today I went for a scouting trip just to get a grip of the ice situation and therefore I knew where the open water was. I parked my car just beside a bridge between two of the big islands. On the outside, to the open sea, no ice. On the inside towards the town, plenty of ice. The problem was that almost all of the pikes would be under the ice, in the inner archipelago. In the autumn the pikes swim into the bays and creeks for the spawning season to come. But not a hundred per cent of them was my working hypothesis. In all fishing you got to have at least a tiny bit of a chance to catch something or else it would be completely meaningless. 
That some people consider it a complete waste of time nevertheless is quite a different story.. 

Well, by the picture on the right it seems that I fulfilled the goal. This is a typical example of how a small pike can save the day. It was the only, both bite and pike I got.  Here in Sweden fishermen have a bad reputation for exaggerating the sizes, numbers and weights of their catches. I don't know if the same goes for you all out there in your foreign countries but for my part it's just not true. Now, if I would I could easily claim that today's pike was at least three times as big as it originally was, but do I? No, of course not!  It may look like it but that's just a bit of zooming of the camera that gives that effect.  I only mention it because I'm pretty new here out in the world and if we'll continue to see each other like this, it's important to be honest, right? Oh, I just checked one thing on my little vignette on my front page and found that I'd forgotten one very important line. But by the time you read this I hope I have repaired that mistake. So take another look! Yes, it's the little bit of not trusting what you read and see here on the Internet.  For all you know maybe I didn't catch a pike at all today! Maybe it's an old picture from two years back! Who will know?

Maybe I wasn't even out fishing today! What I read in Swedish papers is that it can be a real problem with people pretending to be other people.  But rest assured! My warning was of course intended for all other actors here on the net. Not me. It's a pity you can't ask my Swedish readers of my credibility and reputation of never deviate from the subject or even worse, making up stories. 
Just like George Washington I cannot tell a lie. 
But who, on the other hand would be so stupid to admit that he spends a whole day fishing and got just one teeny, weenie, yellow dot little pike if it wasn't true? And that is my angle; that's my line of defense.  But as times go by and if I go on with this I think you'll see what I mean. I'm at least as honest as a certain used car salesman in Bayonne, New Jersey by the name of Elvis Zimmerman.

And now for today's birdwatcher's corner.  Here's a really bad bunch!  Did I tell you that I don't specially fancy swans?  Those filthy, stuck up, aggressive, hissing and... I did? Sorry, in that case. But I know I'm rather alone with that unpleasant attitude and of course I don't tell people about it, but with these bad guys... Wow! They're really hated around here. They get the blame for the bad fishing all claim it to be here in the Baltic. Specially from the fishermen by trade. These big, bad, black pterodactyls-lookalikes  is said to gobble up all the Baltic's content of roach, perch, small pikes, herring and even eels. Let alone stealing all the catches from nets and hoop nets and long lines just to mention some of the tackle the trade fishermen use.  Maybe it is so and maybe it's not. I don't know.

The problem is that the cormorant is protected by the law. I think they have grown in numbers from just a couple in the 60:s to several thousands nowadays. They spread like the Black Plague up and down the Swedish coastline and I suspect that many fishermen spit in their direction and mumble between clenched teeth a "H5N1 to you fellas!"
Immigrants seldom are popular of any species, we all know that. 

The winter continues here in Blekinge with night temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius which means that I have to return to my hibernate-den for approximately a fortnight, it seems.

By the way... Was it really correct that George Washington never told a lie? Wasn't he president of the U. S. of As? 
I felt that I had to check that fantastic story up and so I did. Not surprisingly at all it said that the whole thing about the axe and cherry tree was just a made up story or at least apocryphic, which is the same thing . Who said it was the Encyclopedia Britannica and if you can't trust them, who can you trust?