31st August 2005, Ryabaga Camp, Ponoi River

It's been an extremely wet day today, in many different senses.
Fishermen are an inverted bunch when it comes to weather and they view
sunny days with doom and gloom, and they rub their hands with glee at
the approach of low clouds. So, it should have been a bumper day out
there, but instead people are trundling back in low spirits, convinced
that the fishing gods are unjust, that they've been cheated out of their
rights, that the only consolation is to be had the in camaraderie of
your fellow sufferers, a whisky in hand and sitting round the wood
burning stove. Fishing is a strange hobby, involving pegging your mood
onto something as seemingly arbitrary as hooking unsuspecting water
creatures out of their resting places. Of course, these creatures have
their own agenda and resolutely fail to conform to our human expectation
or even to our attempts to predict what they are going to do next. They
are forever being chastised for not behaving as they ought - which
invariably means not choosing to get caught. Anyway, the camp spirits
are gloomy from a few thin days of thrashing unresponsive waters. I
myself didn't catch a salmon until this morning, day three, which is
almost unheard of on the Ponoi. Having said that, I am not an especially
dedicated fisherman and so have nonetheless been having quite a fun
time, and have been finding other amusements for myself to make up for
the 'slow' waters, and to clear away the ignominy of being, until this
morning, a 'double-skunker'. Yet again, Deakin has been my inspiration
and this afternoon's pleasure was a bit of snorkelling in the Ponatch, a
tributary of the Ponoi and therefore a much more manageable size for the
swimmer. My guide was Dr Sergei Prusov, the world's leading authority on
the Ponoi salmon, and the camp's resident salmon scientist. Sergei is
from Murmansk and, alongside salmon studying and guiding the fishermen,
he likes to swim in the rivers here, especially with snorkel and mask to
dive down to watch the fish swimming around. Sergei and I tramped across
the tundra from the camp, bounding through bogs, and across spongy
fields of fluffy lichens and enormous mushrooms. Sergei is something of
an authority on tundra environments and showed me some of the edible
berries that carpeted our walk, chewing some of them for vitamin rich
liquid and spitting out the pulp, while eating others whole. The swim
was superb fun, and my wet suite 'hoody' was an extra welcome barrier
against the cold. Under his tutelage, I learnt how to swim up to the
salmon pools, and use heavy stones to sink down to the river floor,
cling to rocks and watch these prized fish resting in their underwater
cliffs. I especially enjoyed playing around with the currents,
sometimes thrashing slowly upstream and then rewarding myself by turning
around to fly down with the current, and using my hands to push and
slide off any approaching rocks. I tried to imagine being one of my
prey, living in this watery world, and only occasionally being
dramatically, and possibly traumatically, ejected from it by the strange
and devious technologies of unimagined bipedal land based life forms.
It took us an hour and a half to get back to camp, clutching flippers
and discussing how Sergei now carries a pepper gun on his walks as a
last defence against any encounters with the local bears. Having been
thoroughly soaked by rain and swimming, I plunged into the traditional
sauna for a good sweating session, and am now sipping a rewarding cold
beer in the camp office. This email will probably go out sometime
tomorrow on its daily satellite connection.

Anyway, it's now approaching dinner time, and the fishermen are
gathering at the bar to discuss the day's events. Soon I must join them
and throw myself into the culture, expressing regret to the 'skunkers'
and congratulating those with stories of sporting encounters, especially
tales involving 'bars of silver', fresh fish recently arrived from the
sea and brightly coloured compared to those that have been lingering too
long in the river (known as 'darkies'!).