Fishermen hail spring and smelt season

Photo: Urmas Luik

Professional fishermen Tarmo Luks, Priit Pilme and brothers Villu and Kalle Tüür, back from ice yesterday morning, said that so far the smelt catch was still lousy.

«We emptied ten fykes a couple of days ago, got 400 kilograms all in all,» said Mr Pilme. «Two hundred kilos per fyke, that’d be good.»

Yesterday’s haul was six boxes of fish, 40 kilograms of the silvery stuff. Smelt, mainly.

However, the sea has also yielded nice fat perches, vimba; roach in lesser measure; a few lampreys and even a burbot showing in the box.

«Roach will soon be a bit more abundant, perhaps,» guessed the fishermen.

«Who will want that [roach]?» I asked.

«We’ll dry it, then they will,» replied the men.

Price determined by demand

Under-ice fishing or not, still the men can’t wait for the sea to open up, so they can get into their boats. Perhaps then they hit the Baltic herring. That would be a big thing, for in a good year, the spring time Baltic herring makes for lion’s share of the Pärnu coastal fishermen’s earnings. Smelt also, of course – would there be tonnes of it.

At the same time, due to small volumes caught, smelt price is quite high. The fishermen sell smelt €2 per kilogram, in former money that would be about 30 kroons. Whoever remembers the old times, thinks such price unbelievable for Pärnu.

As smelt becomes more abundant, the price probably will go down, said the men. On fish market, as elsewhere, prices are directly linked to the offer-demand ratio.

As long as the sea is unboatable, the men do their fishing under ice. Mr Luks and his team mainly catch in Valgeranna, from whence they set fykes a kilometre off the shore.

«We also catch at the Kirbu River mouth and at the end of the seawall,» said Mr Luks.

However, the Kirbu River ice now fragile, they dare not enter any more.

Under-ice fishing will continue as long as it carries the men – and their haul. At sea, it can be done. Cutting their test holes, the men have determined sea ice to be up to 70 centimetres thick. And stable. However, there are some cracks and disruptions.

When will the sea ice go?

«The local talk is that its nine to ten days after the river ice goes. But the Pärnu River is still iced up,» meditated Mr  Pilme. «Then again: last year it was the other way around. The bay ice went before the river.»

The ice ain’t for long

For two weeks now, the men have hit the ice more frequently to get their catch. How long they have the under-ice opportunity, nobody knows. Mr Pilme went and checked the Pärnu River situation all the way to Sindi, where, the day before yesterday, water had reached the dam edge.

Yesterday, the Pärnu River ice run had halted at  Tindisaared Isles, just like the two previous years. The high water, collecting behind the ice barrier, had flooded some Sindi town houses in the Kalda district – built on the river meadow. The accident bypassed Linnuriik, though erroneously otherwise reported by media. The Linnuriik housing area is built high on the embankment and needs not fear the rushing waters.

By yesterday, Reiu River had cast its ice in the coastal parts. It remains a secret where it went, however – for the Pärnu River wide ice mass lies straight on the Reiu River mouth. So: the Reiu ice evidently hid itself under the wider brother’s ice cover.

A web camera in Soomaa, at the basin’s upper end at Karukose by the banks of Raudna River, revealed the water had risen to the suspension bridge and invaded a farmhouse yard – still far from its records way back when the waves hit the Karukose sauna windows and all nearby meadows and forest floors were flooded, before the water poured by the rivers to its rest in the sea.