Summer of 86

I spent whole June with my friend (Jan) and his father (Martti). They have summer cabin in Puolanka which was about 100 km from our hometown. It was house where Martti had lived his childhood. It was summer of world championship in football and lot of fishing. During the days we were painting the house, playing football and super mario bros. Every late afternoon or evening we went fishing.

We fished lot to downstream from Hepoköngäs, which is highest waterfall in Finland. It is 24 meters high. It was area where Martti could drop us to fish if he had to go for shopping or something like that. There was good path to the waterfall and bridge over river but we fished mostly north side so we didn’t have to go over. We got lot of trout during that summer. There was no size limit on that area, but in some point we made our own which was about 20cm, all smaller we put back and bigger ones we took to eat. I remember that some days we got so much fishes that now it feels like robbery. Martti took extras what we didn’t need to his parents etc.

During the June we made up different rules by ourselves. We also fished some small brooks and ditches. Those where really difficult to fish. Our rods were about 5 meters long so getting thru bushes was not easy job. Also fishes were really spooky so you couldn’t go close to shore but you need to fish from distance. Biggest trouts we caught from small brooks and some where close to 2 kg but mostly around 1 kg. Martti was fishing some really secret ditches and we were not allowed to go there, I can’t even say now where he was fishing but he always come up with some nice size trouts from those hikes.

One time I was crawling uphill over mound to get to the river. On the top mound there was viper waiting. Viper is only venomous snake in Finland. I almost shitted to my pants when watching eye to eye with snake. My luck was that viper was more scared than me and it turned fast away. That was end for that fishing day, I couldn’t concentrate for fishing after that because I thought that ground is full of vipers.  Silly thought afterwards but when you are 12 years old, you still have imagination running fast.

One other time we went fishing when it was rain and thundering. We headed to Hepoköngäs once again. Jan and I went to top of waterfall to see thundering. It is open area and rock. Thunder and lighting was not far away from us, just on other side of the river. I remember that we raised our rods ( 5-6 meters long) and said something like: ” we are not afraid you thunder, we are going fishing”. In that point nature showed our place in the world, lighting hitted to tree just behind river, maybe 50 meters from us. You can’t imagine how fast we put our rods down and went to canyon for fishing. Rain got heavier so we fished maybe 30 minutes when we went back to the car where Martti was waiting us. We told that it was too heavy rain but I think we were scared by the lighting after all.

These are great memories from childhood. Nowadays I understand that we took too many fishes out but believe me there was lot of fish on that time. I went fishing some areas about 20 years later and fishing was still okay but you could see that there was better paths which means more fishermen around.

I still don’t like vipers but thunder I still love. Now I just have more respect for that. Maybe I have been getting smarter (probably not)

Summer of 86 was time of God’s hand and fishing, especially fishing.

Have a nice weekend

Mika from frozen Finland

Ps front photo is from Thursday when it was -31 celsius, taken after feeding reindeers.