Don’t forget what a wise man tells you!

This has to be the worst fishing drought I’ve gone through in my life. Everyone over here in Finland has banged on about how wonderful this winter has been – with all the snow n’all ….Yet if you want my opinion and this is coming from a fly-fisherman’s perspective ………..(Shouts loudly)……”IT’S SHIT”! I’ve been locked indoors …..for what? 5 months now, having to endure all my newly found blogger friends fishing escapades. Week after week I’ve read countless tales of their own fluff chucking escapades, and looked at their smug faces as they paraded their fish porn for all & sundry …..me included! to ogle over. Its been pretty much unbearable at times.

So for the last two weeks now I’ve been out in the car doing my daily patrols around the Island…….. reconnaissance missions, I tell Lena, Looking for any openings in the ice large enough for me to go chuck some fluff at. News has spread fast here on Replot within the local community, that the mad South African is tearing up the asphalt like a man possessed, looking for any open water. Anyway I got a call from one of the them yesterday saying that he’d heard about my plight, god knows how he got my phone number …unimportant really! What was important and joy to my ears was that the small bay opposite his summer cottage had opened up sufficiently enough for me to release some of this pent up fishing angst I had coursing though my veins and was wondering if I would like to use his small rowing boat for a couple of hours……Eh yeh!, do bears shit in the woods fella?

No need to pack the car, just check the map, grab my camera And I was off. 20 min later I arrived at Pasi’s summer cottage…..dribbling profusely. Now I would have thought that seeing he’d phoned me he would have realized & understood how desperate I was to get it on! But as I’m truly exotic to these neck of the woods, no sooner had he clasped my hand to shake it was he pushing me indoors to meet his wife and have a cup of coffee & some Puula - (Finish cake). Pasi, now in his late sixties, had never heard of fly-fishing for pike let alone seen it in practice So with life stories shared and new friendships cemented.

I grabbed my rod n flies and paddled out into the small bay.

In my sheer haste to dust the cobwebs from my tackle, I had forgotten to place the plug in the bottom of the boat which Pasi had told me was hanging up outside next to the wood shed. Think I got 40m out before I heard him shouting from the bank but to be honest I thought he was just wishing me luck waving to me. It wasn’t until I saw my fly box levitating around in the back of the boat did I realize what all the commotion was about…Perrrrrrrrrkkele! I mumbled to myself (Finish expletive word that encompasses (Shit, Bugger, Bollocks, Crap all in one, depending on how you pronounce it and how many rrrrr’s you have)

Cant imagine what must have been going through Pasi’s mind as he watching me slowly sink his rowing boat. Anyway by the time I landed the half submerged craft, I was completely drenched and freezing my bollocks off. I wouldn’t have minded but I hadn’t even chucking a fly. Suppose the morel of the story is to always listen to what a wise man tells you

The pink dotted marker on the west of the island is where I was if you are interested.