Overnight Fishing

Sunday July 18th

The fishing trip got off to a shaky start when the outboard motor of our boat broke down soon after our departure. This is Lena and I at 18:00, sitting on what looked like an abandoned wreck on the shore, near where our boats motor was being worked on. We discovered that this wasn't an abandoned wreck when the owner came and shewed us away just after we took this picture.

	At 19:49 Lena proudly displaying her first catch. She caught her first fish a long time before I did.

Of course I cought the largest fish, but that was a long time later, and in all the excitement I forgot to take a picture, so you probably won't believe me.. I also managed to catch two fish at once at one point, but again, no picture :-(

Once we had enough fish, we landed, set up camp and our guides prepared some tea, fish and some Ukha (Russian fish soup), served in a traditional way from a flat stone that had been washed and spead with salt. Here is what I was able to find out about Ukha: This soup was highly praised by Ivan the Terrible -- who wasn't easy to please -- and by Antoine Careme -- who was even harder to please, at least gastronomically. As the oldest recorded Russian soup, ukha began life as any digestible food in a liquid, but by the 16th and 17th century lavish Russian courts, it was transformed into elaborate and diverse creations, served between pie courses. It was in the 18th century that it became associated exclusively with fish -- and in the 19th century, under the influence of French cuisine, that it became the delicate creation that it is today. A light, clean first course; This picture was taken at 03:42, just after eating.

Another view of our camp site. Lena is sitting on the left, with our guides on the right, and their Sobaka (dog), who at one point fell out of the boat and had to swim to shore where we could retrieve him.

	Then it was back into the boat for some more fishing. Though it never really gets dark at this latitude, the sun does briefly dip below the horizon in the middle of the night, so at 04:02 we got to see the sun rise from our boat (I mean we saw it from the boat - it didn't rise from the boat...)

We arrived home later that morning loaded with fish and badly needing some sleep, but Natasha was nowhere to be seen. That meant that we had to deal with the fish before going to sleep, as having already gone several hours without refrigeration, would not last much longer as they were. As neither of us had any experience gutting fish, this was a bit of a messy adventure, further complicated by the realization that Lena's knife was the only sharp one we had, and we had left it on the boat. We eventually had to seek the advice of one of Natasha's neighbours, who took pity on us and came to show us how it was done.

We then had a few hours sleep till Natasha arrived home later in the evening and made dinner.

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