Gone Fishing

It's national day of failure in Finland today. Point is to get people to think more positively about not succeeding in what we do and to bravely take up new challenges. For me this day seemed like a megaflop from its dawn. First off, there was not even the slightest chance to get my eyes open. Even two and a half cups of coffee and a shower wasn't enough to wake me up. Plan was to start reading critical legal positivism first thing in the morning, but I just couldn't be arsed. The clock was ticking and all I had done was just a couple of loathing glimpses on the cover of the book.

Sometime during the early afternoon I decided that today was to be a day off. After a while I decided to pack up the camera gear and head to the nearby river and its mouth. Not long after I had closed the door behind me, I started think that this wasn't going to be such a bad day after all. A brisk walk outdoors can sometimes help a lot.

Once there, one of the first things I noticed was the aged men on the both banks of the river. They were doing something with their landing nets but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. Here's a shot that gives you the picture (pun intended). All I knew they gave me a pretty darn good looking stuff to snap away. My ignorance started to get too painful to bear so I rallied myself and walked up to this fella, Jouko, pictured here.

He told me they were trying to catch whitefish. According to him, the best way to catch them is to use landing nets and swing it downriver time and time again. A reel would be of no good due to the low visibility in the river Vantaa, I was told. The men had chosen this spot because the fish come here to spawn during the couple of the first weeks of October, or so. Usually they sit here for hours and catch just a few fish each day. All he catches will be consumed in his own table, so there's nothing commercial about this. All the men there knew each other by name and they got their own thing going on there, throwing witticisms between them and cheering whenever someone caught something. Not a bad way to spend a day -- or fourteen --, I guess!

I don't normally harass people with my camera. Now that I approached someone and asked whether I could take their picture, I was given a permission. Today's theme fits here rather nicely: So what if you fail? You can't make it happen if you don't try it. If you try it, you just might be able to pull it off!