06-04-29

Saturday

Beware!

Originally I didn't plan to make a journal of today's fishing because the outcome was so poor. I mean, if I don't catch something special there's not so much to report, right? 
Also it depends of other things. For instance how long it was since the latest entry, interesting things I saw or happened, or if I feel like writing, or how much time I have. But when the security, life and health of visitors, fishermen and tourists from various countries are at stake nothing could stop me!
So exclusively for you my foreign friends, I do this. In my Swedish journals I have already talked about this issue several times and I think they'd risk to get utterly  bored if I repeated myself.  You could say that this whole fishing journal is a warning and the Swedish readers are well aware of the danger.
On one of the big islands here just outside Karlskrona there reigns one of the utmost terrors known to mankind.  Or at least to a friendly pike fly fisherman walking along the shore peacefully minding his own business.

And mind you, this is not a joke! The pictures are as usual real and taken by myself the same day as the journal. This is true in 98,5% of all the photos in all six years of journal writing.

So what would you do when one of these suddenly stood right before you, scraping one of his enormous hoofs, snorting and snuffling, growling and grunting. What would you do when he slowly at first, came at you? When he picked up speed and lowered his broad horns just as sharp as your chemically sharpened Kamasan hooks?  When the very ground shook of the galloping stampeding 600 kg bull coming right at you, turf and grass, muck and mud spreading about?   No, this is certainly not a joke but the moment of truth! That is, if you were equipped with a muleta and a sword. (If muleta means the special red cloth a toreador is waving about, which I have a faint memory of that it does, of course) In other case you'd better run like hell! Luckily enough the Baltic lies near by and if you, like me is dressed in waders and fencing it off with your sturdy wading staff you will live afterwards to tell the gruesome story!

Sometimes I may be a little hush-hush about exactly where I have been but in this matter of life and death I must be open and clear about it. Yes, it is the island of Hasslö I'm talking about. The island of the hazel, it means. The whole of the southern part is fenced in and enormous hordes of these fierce animals live there now.  This is a well known story here in Blekinge through the local newspapers how it came about to happen. But it's too complicated for me to sort out now in English in all details. So much I can tell you though, that it could very well be the main story in a Wild West movie by John Ford starring John Wayne! Some landowners against some other landowners and who has the right to decide what to do with the common land anyway?! One party set up the long fence and brought the cattle to the island and another party in protest, opened the gates and let the dangerous bulls out to stampede people's gardens and scare women and children almost to death. This happened last year and sometime in February this year a stormy meeting took place in the Landowner's Association and the old board was shown to the door under much booing and a new was elected. And I thought that was that. But when I arrived there today I was shocked at spotting the skulking enormous shapes in the shrubbery!
Speaking about movies it was just like in a scary movie when someone towards the ending exclaims (or whispers), wide eyed and pale: "It has started again!" whatever horrors the movie is about.
So if you're not a brave bull fighter from Spain, whatever you do, keep away from Hasslö!

Not only was I several times facing terrible dangers but the fishing was utterly bad at that. I didn't catch one fish on the whole of Hasslö!  And to be honest I don't blame the bulls for that. The reason for that failure was that I tried to fish for sea trout.  I consider them very hard to catch and you got to be a little lucky, is my opinion when you go for sea trout. Especially when trying from the land side.  Later on in the day I got just a little bit more lucky when I at both least and last got this ordinary sized pike in another place. As pictures go, this turned out to be rather nice, I think. The pike appears to be a little bit bigger and the struggle a little bit tougher than it really was. That I like!

Today the wildlife really flourished, I can further tell you.  But unfortunately I didn't manage to shoot neither one of two different species of mammals I'm speaking of here,  with my loaded Pentax. One was too small and fast and the other too deep sunk and was swimming away from me. The one in the water was a seal and the little scurrying, furrying and hurrying animal was a mouse.
That is an irritated feature of my in other aspects fine camera that it takes so long for it to get ready. 300 milliseconds can be a really long period of time, I can tell you.

Let me finish this journal off with another shot at one of the terrors standing on guard with every intention to attack everyone trying to enter its own private kingdom out here on the island of Hasslö.  "Don't come here and try to fish!" one may very easily interpret in the brute's ear shattering, warning bellowing roar. Sometimes 300 milliseconds can be far too short of a time also... That's about the time this bull will get at you so you better be fast. But don't take my word for it. I mean, if you for some strange reason think that I'm bluffing or exaggerating. You just come to the (otherwise fair and nice) island of Hasslö, drive as far south as you can, park and go to the public beach of Sandvik. There you will see the sturdy, well built, high and thick fence. In fact, my first thought went directly to another movie, Jurassic Park, when I first laid eyes on it. There they had some good fences! But the fence of Hasslö is higher and stronger, and the wire is more barbed... If you still insist of getting in, be sure not to wear anything red on you..

Oh, just one more thing!
I was after sea trout and didn't have any luck right? But later that day when I fished for pike something worth telling occurred. It was raining a lot and on one location in a strait, I went down and waded out in the water. I mention this about the strait because in it people were fishing for herring and this strait is a known location for the herring. 
Anyway, suddenly I felt a very wild bite. A whopper of a fish took the fly and just went for it. Fast as a bull on the run it swam away and the line snapped. Just like that. It broke. My point is that a pike usually don't behave like this. It's more slow and lazy at the beginning at least. I didn't catch even a glimpse of it, I just saw a big swirl forming on the surface and that was that.
So it might have been a sea trout.
Now my fishing vacation begins and you won't see another fishing journal for a while. Not here on Gagnekulla.net anyway. Exactly how long a while lasts nobody seems to really know. Not even the otherwise so excellent Encyclopedia Britannica though a thoroughly search. Two, maybe three weeks, maybe?