Long Burn

Siamese Pike

Eric Holland sent me this photo of a siamese pike caught at Cooney Dam, 30 miles SW of Billings.

Labels: fish

Beak Pike

Yesterday we fished for the wiley beak pike Belone belone and the beaks did not disappoint.

These fish were called 'gar' by the British, based on an Old English word for 'spear'. When they got to North America they used the same word for the North American freshwater gars, but those are different fish. In Swedish they are called beak pike, in Danish horn fish and in south Swedish, horn pike.

There was a handful of guys out on the breakwater fishing, some dads, some young guys drinking beer. One kid didn't seem attached to anyone and he started asking me how to cast. I gave him a quick lesson and then after a minute he was in the middle of a huge tangle of string. I cut him loose and retied his leader.

These fish live in the North Atlantic and swim up the coast and into the Baltic in the spring. They spear their prey with their beaks which makes for fun fishing. They are fast, they fight, and they jump out of the water and dance on their tails, flashing silver in the sun.

Here is F holding one of the fish, in front of a WWII bunker guarding the coast. We caught 4 of them in about an hour, 2 apiece.

They have beautiful skin.

Here you can see an amazing thing about these fish: they have green bones. Note the vertebrae. The meat is like pikes', white with a few black nerves, and tastes just a shade richer.

Heavens they're tasty.

Labels: fish

Two sides of the coin

I just read the latest comments on the first Rebellion entry.

Visual Proof of the Existence of Santa Claus.

With deepest respect to everyone involved, God bless the readers of Long Burn. A sincere thanks that you're all here. Someday we will put our feet up on a big stone fireplace in a cabin up north and talk about the fish we caught and the ones that got away.

Søren Kierkegaard: Doubt is an essential element of faith. To believe or have faith that God exists, without having doubted God's existence or goodness, would not be a faith worth having. To have faith is at the same time to have doubt. The doubt is the rational part of your thoughts, without which faith would have no substance. The leap to faith transcends rationality in favor of something uncanny: faith.

These people who try to prove God's existence have missed the point.

Labels: dad, fish, rebellion

Last day of winter sports vacation

The Swedish winter sports school vacation week is kind of a misnomer, since it is spring, the earliest spring on record. January temperatures were 10 F above average, and February has also been unusually warm. Flowers are blooming, hedgehogs have come out of hibernation, pollen is in the air and the fish are biting.