[spring weather in russia] fishing for answers

Fishing in happier times

With the climate change, the effects in Russia are perhaps more pronounced than in the rest of Europe and Britain.

Russians are very straightforward people and when they see spring type rain everywhere in mid-January and no snow anywhere to be found and when this has been increasing year by year for the last five years, then they wouldn’t be so stupid as to pretend it’s not happening, unlike some in Britain and Europe who are closing their eyes and calling it a myth.

It’s particularly hard on the fishermen who love to go out and cut holes on the ice, sheltering behind windbreaks and generally spending their afternoons this way. It gets them out of the flat, gives their wives a break and there’s a strong sense of cameraderie and a certain amount of vodka consumed in the process.

Today, on the way home from work, they were still out there but there was a layer of water across the ice and in places it was breaking into drifts, with the fishermen on them. It’s not unusual for deaths to occur when they crash through to the freezing water below.

The general word around these parts is that it’s a terrible situation. The land needs this frost [Russian-speak for minus twenty and a metre of snow] for the flora to regenerate and this year it just doesn’t seem as if it’s going to happen.

The drivers have now taken off their winter tyres and are back on the summer tyres and that's never occurred before.

The mood is sombre.