THE ULTIMATE ANGLING BUCKET LIST

What amazed me about those smaller
fish taken around the log was the
amount of aggression they showed for
their size when attacking the lures. Very
obviously, even by that stage, they were
instinctive full on predators, which put
together with Pavels account of the
earlier bigger fish left me wondering
just what it might be like if one of us
was to hook up something into double
figures, which I'm sure are there, and
for a couple of good reasons.
The first is that asp have a preference
for the lower reaches of big rivers,
Andrey Pavanov releasing small Asp
though we were still around a hundred
and fifty miles from the Black Sea,
which while that might sound a long way, is nothing when you consider the total length of the Danube.
More important still, the local anglers, of which there are literally hundreds each evening along every
available stretch of river bank in and around Ruse city centre, for the most part have absolutely no
interest whatsoever in catching the things.
Not that they would have much of a chance of catching them anyway as most were fishing with bait,
the reason being that bread and maggots catch roach, bream, and catfish, all of which you can eat,
whereas asp, certainly from the English speakers I bumped into, are not well regarded as table fish,
which in light of their endangered status is perhaps as well.
CANADA
I chose to fish the Fraser River at Chilliwack in British Columbia very carefully. I needed to catch a
fish from freshwater weighing in excess of one hundred pounds, and while there are a number of
potential locations and species such as wels catfish from the River Ebro, and arapaima in Thailand, with
typically one in every six sturgeon caught there topping the hundred pound mark, the chances of success
looked very good, on top of which, I just fancied fishing for sturgeon anyway.
Our timing however wasn't in any way
flexible. Dave Devine and I, plus our
wives, were over there to see the
Calgary stampede, followed by a drive
across the rockies taking in all the usual
tourist haunts along the way through to
Chilliwack, just outside Vancouver,
where we would hook up with a guide
for a few days on the river.
Glacial flour water discolouration
Not that timing mattered that much to
us, because sturgeon were our primary
aim, though July is not a good time to be
there if you want to catch any of the
various Pacific salmon species which
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