A few years ago, I lived in Siberia for a year and had the chance to visit a town called Tinda. A couple of the local restaurants had fly fishing on the menu, which surprised me.
The Surprise in Siberia
When most people hear the word "Siberia," they think of a cold, empty tundra that goes on for hundreds of miles. In the winter, this is more or less true. In the summer, when temperatures are in the 80s and 90s, most of Siberia is green and lush. I didn't bring shorts, so this came as a bit of a surprise.
Since I lived in the city of Chita, I was able to go to the town of Tinda in the forest. Tinda is about a day's drive east of Lake Baikal. It was built as a lumber town in the 1950s. A hundred thousand people were moved around by the communist government, and they are still there today. The area around Tinda is full of beautiful mountains. When the snow from winter melts, rivers, lakes, and creeks start to flow again.
When I was in Tinda, the sons of the people I was staying with invited me to go fly fishing with them. Since they didn't speak English and I could speak Russian well enough for a kindergartener, funny things were bound to happen. We took a walk to what seemed to be the best place in town.
After walking for 45 minutes, we came to a creek that moved slowly and looked like it belonged in Wyoming. We were dwarfed by the trees, which cast shadows on the water. Along the bank, small pools of water formed, and I thought I saw more than a few of our slippery friends.
Everyone knows that a person who tries something for the first time will always do well. The boys had fished here a lot, but I had never been there. By every good thing in the world, I should have caught 20 fish while they caught nothing. Sad to say, evil won. I didn't catch anything at all. On the other hand, Nikoli and Oleg were getting fisher elbow.
They caught a lot of fish, but I don't know what kinds they were. There was just too much of a language gap. The fishers were between six and ten inches long and looked like they were related to Mackinaws, but the vodka party made this a guess.
