Out of Time
A story about carp fishing, patience, and what a person finds when they stop rushing.
CHAPTER I
Territory
The car was loaded up to the roof. When you head to the water for ten days, you do not pack for fishing, you move house. A bedchair, a bivvy, a stove, a supply of gas, several dozen kilos of grain and boilies, and on top of that water and food for two mammals.
I switched off the engine. The forest took a breath.
Lupa was the first to leap out of the car. Her grey, wolf-like coat blended perfectly with the shadow cast by the old oaks. A Czechoslovakian Wolfdog is not the kind of dog that runs about aimlessly and barks at the wind. Lupa stopped, raised her head, and drew in the air. Her amber eyes scanned the bank. She was checking the ground. Only when she looked at me and gave a slight wag of her tail did I know we were alone. We could start building our home.
Setting up camp for an expedition this long is an art of logistics. The tent cannot just stand anywhere carelessly. It has to be sheltered from the wind, but with a view of the water. It has to stand on firm ground, because if the rains come, I do not want to wake up in mud.
For the first hour, I did not touch the rods at all. First the base. I put up the tent, levelled the bedchair, my spine would thank me for it after the fifth night. Lupa found her place by the entrance and lay down in a sphinx position. She was alert. Every rustle in the undergrowth, every snap of a twig, she registered with a flick of her ears. With a guard like that, I could sleep easy, even in the deepest wilderness.
Only when the camp was up and the water in the kettle had started to murmur for coffee did I move over to my gear. From a rugged case I pulled out the bait boat. To a layman it would have looked like a spaceship, but to me it was an extended hand. I checked the batteries. Full power. Lupa raised her head when she saw me setting the sonar monitor on its stand. She knew that gear. She knew that when the “humming creature” hit the water, I would disappear for long minutes with my eyes glued to the screen. She walked over to the bank and sat down, her gaze fixed on the surface, ready to watch over the whole operation.
The launch onto the water happened without a single sound. I moved the transmitter stick and the catamaran quietly set off toward the middle of the lake, leaving a V-shaped wake behind it. I stared at the screen. Coloured lines were drawing a map of the underwater world that remained a mystery to everyone else.
“We’ve got it, Lupa,” I muttered, more to myself, when I saw the sharp drop in depth. From four metres to seven.
The sonar showed a hard bar just beyond the drop-off. An ideal spot. The bottom was clean, with no weed, confirmed on the screen by a distinct yellow-red band. Water temperature: 16 degrees. And then… arches appeared on the display. Two clear signals just off the bottom. The fish were there.
Precision. That is the key word. I loaded the boat’s hoppers, in one a rig with a perfectly balanced snowman, a bottom bait plus a pop-up, in the other a mix of pellets, maize, and crushed boilies. No blind catapulting. No spread. The load had to lie in a tight spot.
At my command, the boat returned to the chosen spot. It was 120 metres from the bank and I could see it only by its position lights, which were now shining brightly in the dusk.
Click.
I released the hatches. The rig and the bait went down exactly where I wanted them. A metre from the mouth of the fish I had seen on the sonar.
I pulled the boat back to the bank. Lupa sniffed at its hull, as if checking whether the “creature” had brought any news from the other side, then returned to her observation post.
I sat down in the chair and stretched out my legs. Everything was in its place. The rods on the rod pod, the indicators lightly tensioned, and in the water a perfect trap.
(…)
CHAPTER II
Rhythm of the Water
Night water has its own rules. Time stops flowing in a straight line and starts being measured from one take to the next.
It was two thirty in the night when the receiver, lying right by my ear, exploded with sound. It was no timid beep. It was a continuous, frantic tone. A run. The fish must have taken it with force, without any tentative nibbling.
Before I even managed to open my eyes, I heard the rustle of a tracksuit. Lupa was already standing by the tent entrance. She was not barking, she knew this was not an intruder but action. I burst out of the sleeping bag and shoved my feet into the wellies that were standing ready on alert. Headlamp on, tent zip down.
I ran out into the night. The right-hand rod was bent into a curve and the reel spool was peeling off line at the speed of light.
“There he is!” I shouted into the darkness, lifted the rod, and struck.
The resistance was dull and heavy. The moment the fish felt the hook, it tried to make for the flooded tree on the left. I tightened the drag. I could not allow that. A brute-force fight began. Lupa stood right beside me, staring into the dark water, her ears pricked in alert. She could feel my emotions. When the fish lunged into another escape, the dog tensed her muscles, and when I won back metres of line, she shifted from paw to paw.
After ten minutes, I caught a flash of scales in the beam of my headlamp. A beautiful fully scaled carp. It slipped into the landing net on the very first attempt.
“We’ve got him, little one,” I whispered to the dog. Lupa nudged the net with her nose, as if she had to inspect the catch herself.
A quick weighing, disinfecting the hook wound, and the fish went back into the water. But for me, nothing was over. It was only the middle of the cycle.
I wiped my hands on a rag and went back to my “battle” station. The rig had to go back into the water immediately. I checked the hook point against my fingernail. Sharp. I put on a new pellet, because the old one had already softened a little.
I switched on the power to the bait boat and the sonar. In the darkness of the night, the boat’s lights looked like a little UFO landing on the surface. I loaded the hoppers. Took the model out onto the water.
“Go on,” I muttered.
I steered it and watched the small display. 118 metres… 119… 120. I was over the spot.
I opened the baitrunner. The splash was barely audible. The rig was lying perfectly in place again, waiting for the next lover of a free feast.
Only when the boat returned to the bank and the rod rested safely on the bite alarm could I breathe again.
I dropped heavily into the chair. The adrenaline was slowly fading, giving way to a pleasant tiredness. I reached for the pack of cigarettes. For a split second, the flame of the lighter lit up my face and Lupa’s glossy eyes as she lay down by my feet again.
I took a deep drag. The smoke released into the cold night air slowly vanished into the darkness.
I poured myself some coffee from the thermos. It was still hot, black, and strong. Steam rose from the mug and warmed my hands.
“Good work,” I said quietly. Silence settled over the camp again. This was the moment. Perfect harmony.
Toward dawn, when the sun was already beginning to show itself timidly in the sky, Lupa sprang onto all fours. The fur on the back of her neck bristled upright. A deep, warning growl tore from her throat and quickly turned into loud barking.
“Woof! Woof!”
Someone was coming along the path. For me, they were still invisible, but the Wolfdog was never wrong.
I got up from the chair. A figure emerged from behind the bushes. It was Marek, someone I knew from the angling club, who knew I was fishing here.
“Easy, Lupa! He’s one of ours!” I called.
The dog did not stop barking straight away. She ran toward the newcomer, still tense, ready to attack. Only when Marek stopped and held out his hand and she caught his scent did the change come at once. The ridge of fur went down, her tail started wagging, and the fearsome guardian turned into a welcoming puppy.
“Well hello there, beast,” Marek laughed and ruffled the fur on her head.
“How was the night? Anything happening?”
“Twelve kilos on the mat at two thirty,” I replied, raising my mug of coffee in greeting. “Sit down, I’ll make a fresh one.”
CHAPTER III
Dead Water and Wolfish Boredom
The fourth day greeted us with a silence so dense it rang in the ears. This is the moment in a long expedition I fear the most. Not storms, not wind, but stagnation. The surface of the lake looked like oil. Not a single ripple, not a single sign of a fish. The atmospheric pressure had shot up and stayed there, as if someone had nailed the barometer needle in place.
The fish had stopped feeding. The alarms had been silent for sixteen hours. Even the small stuff had vanished somewhere.
I sat in the chair, staring dully at the motionless indicators. I had already smoked what must have been half a pack of cigarettes, and in my head I was picking apart every element of the whole setup. Had the boilies started to stink of silt? Had the rig tangled on the way down? Or had the fish simply moved off to another part of the water, somewhere the temperature was at least half a degree cooler?
Lupa took it worse than I did. For a Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, idleness is torture. For the first two hours of the “dead water,” she kept trying to get me to play, nudging my hand with her nose and bringing ever larger branches out of the woods. When I ignored the third piece of wood, almost as big as a small tree, she let out a heavy sigh, a sound that was almost like a human “oh God,” and started minding her own business.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her. She began hunting an imaginary enemy in the grass. She stalked on bent paws, with her nose close to the ground, only to suddenly leap into a clump of nettles. A frog shot out of it and Lupa jumped back with an offended snort, insulted that the prey had turned out to be so little noble. Then she began digging a hole in the shade under the oak, searching for a cooler layer of sand. She did it with the precision of an excavator, flinging soil to the sides with her hind legs.
“Just don’t dig under my tent!” I called out warningly.
She looked at me with those yellow eyes of hers, as if she wanted to say, “Then do something so something happens.”
She was right. I had to act. If the mountain would not come to Mohammed, Mohammed had to change tactics.
I pulled the rigs in. Both rods ended up on the bank. It was time for a technical check.
I thoroughly inspected the terminal sections of the rigs. The coated braid on one of the hooklinks was slightly frayed, most likely from rubbing against the mussels on the bottom. Into the bin. There is no room for risk.
I opened my “pencil case” of tackle bits. That is the strategic heart of a carp angler. Hooks, swivels, shrink tubing. I decided to lighten the rigs. When the fish are cautious and not feeding aggressively, I have to outsmart them with finesse.
I tied new hooklinks. This time I went with a Ronnie Rig. It is a setup that lets the bait lying on the bottom move freely, making it much harder for the fish to spit the hook. I used smaller hooks, size fours instead of twos. They had to be sharp as medical needles. I checked every point against my fingernail, it bit in at the lightest touch and did not skid across the surface. Exactly right.
Now the bait. I gave up the big twenty-four-millimetre boilies I had been fishing with the first few days. The fish were either full or lazy. I pulled out a jar of wafters, baits with neutral buoyancy. I chose a bright yellow one, pineapple-flavoured with a note of butyric acid. Something that would not so much feed the fish as irritate it and provoke a strike out of sheer curiosity. I mounted the bait on the spike by the hook. It balanced perfectly just off the bottom, it did not lift the hook, but it made sure the carp would suck it into its mouth with the slightest inhale.
“There, Lupa. We’ll see what they have to say about that,” I muttered on the way to the bait boat.
The dog immediately left her hole in the ground and took up position by the bank. I switched on the sonar. This time I was not looking for fish in the water column. I was looking for bottom structure. I decided one rig would not go onto the plateau where I had fed more, but I would place it on the edge of the vegetation, much closer to the bank. There, where the carp might be looking for shade in this heat.
I loaded the boat’s hoppers. I changed the feeding strategy too. No maize, no carpet of particles. Into the hopper I poured only a handful of crushed boilies and drenched it with booster, a thick syrup that would create a scent trail in the water but give the fish no chance to fill up. This was meant to be a foreplay, not lunch.
I was taking it out in full concentration. My eyes were on the sonar display as I manoeuvred between the underwater obstacles.
“Eighty-five metres… stop,” I whispered.
I released the latch. The hatches opened. The rig sank to the bottom, accompanied by an aromatic cloud.
I did the same with the second rod, only I placed it deeper in the old spot, hoping the fish would return to their “dining room” in the evening.
When the rods were resting on the rod pod again and the lines were tight, I felt I had done everything in my power. Now nature had to pull.
I went back to the chair. I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. In the still air, the smoke drifted lazily upward. I poured myself a fresh coffee. It was black as pitch, just the way I like it.
Lupa came over, shook the sand from her muzzle, and laid her head in my lap. I scratched her behind the ears and she blissfully half-closed her eyes.
“Now we wait, ginger. Now we wait,” I said quietly.
The sun was slowly beginning to sink toward the horizon, changing the colour of the water from steel to gold. I knew that the change in pressure and temperature that would come with the night could be the key. And if not… well, I still had four days ahead of me. In carp fishing, it is not about catching without pause. It is about being ready when that one right moment comes.
The air suddenly changed its smell. It turned close and the birds fell silent. I looked toward the horizon. The sky, blue until that moment, was beginning to cloud over with a strange dark violet colour.
Lupa got to her feet, her fur bristling, and let out a low, throaty growl, her gaze fixed on the roiling clouds.
She knew it before I did. A change in the weather was coming. And a violent one.
CHAPTER IV
Interrupted Fight
The horizon vanished. What only moments ago had formed the line of forest on the far bank had now turned into a solid dark blue wall. The air had grown so thick it could have been cut with a knife.
Lupa started turning in circles. She was not afraid of thunder, to her the rumble was natural, just like a hunter’s shot in the forest. But the wind, that was something else. Gusting, shifting wind irritated her senses, drowned out scents, and roared in her ears. She paced nervously around the tent, flicking her ears every few moments and looking up into the treetops, which were beginning to break into a mad dance.
“All right, girl. We’re breaking camp,” I said, and finished the rest of the cold coffee.
The rods stayed. It was risky, graphite blanks sticking up into the sky are perfect lightning conductors. But instinct was whispering to me that this change in pressure would wake the monsters. I left them on the rod pod, but I pulled the tips as low as possible, almost down to the surface, to reduce the risk as much as I could.
The rest of the gear had to disappear. The chair, the table, the food bags, everything ended up inside the tent. I pulled an overwrap over the bivvy. That extra layer turned it into a real bunker, cutting out both rain and cold. Inside, it grew darker and at the same time more cosy.
No sooner had I pulled the entrance zip shut than the sky split open.
The first drops hit the tent skin like a burst from a machine gun. A moment later, the world vanished behind sheets of pouring rain. The noise of the rain was deafening.
We sat inside. Lupa lay in her place, but she was not asleep. Her head was raised and her eyes followed the tent fabric as it rippled in the wind. She could feel the elements pressing against our shelter.
“It’ll be all right,” I muttered, more to myself than to her.
And then it happened. The sound I had been waiting for for four days cut its way through the roar of the gale.
The receiver let out a continuous scream. The blue diode lit up the dimness of the tent like a strobe. Adrenaline shot through my veins. I looked at the dog. Lupa did not even move, she knew that now it was my turn and my madness.
I unzipped the tent and ran out into the rain. Water drenched me in a fraction of a second. It was dark, all I could see was the flashing light of the alarm on the bank. The rod was bending dangerously and the line was disappearing into the foaming water.
I reached my rod. I struck.
He was on.
I felt a powerful, pulsing weight. This was no five-kilo runt. It was a locomotive that paid no mind to my resistance. The fish drove for the bottom and made full use of the chaos ruling on the surface.
There is something primal about a fight in sheets of rain. Water was pouring into my eyes, my hands were slipping on the rod handle. I felt every tail beat through the blank. Slowly, metre by metre, I began to win line back. He was strong, but I was determined.
And then the sky was split by a blinding flash.
A fraction of a second later, a tremendous crack shook the ground. Lightning struck an old tree, maybe two hundred metres from me, on the far side of the bay. The air smelled of ozone and burning. My hair stood on end in terror, I could literally feel the electricity in the air.
Fear. Primal, animal fear clenched my stomach. In my hands I was holding a carbon rod, a perfect conductor of electricity. I was standing in the open. I was a target.
“Faster. I have to have him now!” the thought screamed in my head.
I forgot about technique. I forgot about patience. I forgot that a big fish by the bank always comes with one last desperate lunge.
I tightened the drag almost all the way. I started pumping with brute force, trying to get him to the bank as fast as possible, just so I could run back to the tent.
That was the mistake. The fish felt resistance it could no longer break through. It turned right by the bank. The rod bent to the very limit of what it could take. Instead of giving it line, I held the spool with my hand.
Crack!
The sound of the line snapping was quiet, but to me it sounded louder than thunder. The rod sprang straight and the rig shot into the air, empty.
Slack.
Emptiness.
For a moment I just stood there in the downpour with the rod in my hand, staring into the churning water. I was soaked through, my hands were shaking, and my heart was pounding like a hammer. But I had not been struck by lightning. I had been struck by my own stupidity.
The fish won. It made use of my panic.
I went back to the tent and threw the rod into the porch. I stepped inside and water dripped off me onto the groundsheet. Lupa lifted her head and looked at me questioningly. I did not have to say anything.
She came over to me and began licking the raindrops from my hand. She knew.
I sat down on the bedchair and buried my face in my hands. Outside, the storm was still raging at full force, but inside me there was silence. The silence of defeat.
CHAPTER V
The Master and the Record
After the defeat the carp dealt me during the storm, silence came, but a different kind now, not the kind that rings in your ears, but something soft and velvety. The rain stopped at dawn, and the lake, washed clean and refreshed, began to steam in the first rays of the sun.
I was exhausted, but full of determination. Mistakes happen, but what decides what kind of angler you are is whether you learn from them.
Lupa came first. I dried her with a towel and, in a gesture of trust, she curled into a perfect ball in the driest corner of the tent. Then me. Hot tea, a dry tracksuit, and the most important ritual of all, the return to perfection.
I took out the rig from which the fish had come off. This time without any haste. I checked the knot, I checked the hook point. I chose a large, hard twenty-four-millimetre bait with a spicy sausage flavour, a selective meaty scent trail for long summer sessions. The bait boat, like a surgical probe, carried the rig back to exactly the same spot as the previous one, onto the hard drop behind the underwater rise. I poured a bigger dose into the hopper, I wanted to provoke the carp into feeding again and finding my bait.
The hours passed in quiet waiting. The afternoon came lazily. The sun was pleasantly warm and the wind, the one that irritated Lupa so much, was barely noticeable. The dog lay in the shade and every now and then lifted her head just to check.
The carp took just before dusk. It was not a frantic, chaotic take like in the night. The alarm gave a single, drawn-out BEEEEEEEEP. The sound was calm, but decisive. It was no tentative nibbling, it was a run. The fish had taken the bait and was slowly, without panic, moving off into the dusk.
I sprang from the chair, the adrenaline cold and focused this time. Without thinking, I glanced at Lupa. She was already standing by the rod pod, but her stance was different now. She was calm, she knew that now it was time for my work.
I lifted the rod. The fight began methodically. No panic, no brute-force pumping. I remembered the bitter lesson from the night. Patience was my only advantage.
The fish moved slowly, heavily, almost lazily. I knew I was dealing with a big, old fish. I struck once more, firm, to make sure the hook was set securely.
The fight lasted more than twenty minutes. The fish would not let itself be drawn in and forced me to walk along the bank. I could feel sweat running down my temple, but I stayed calm. It was a dance. When she gave, I took. When she took, I eased the drag for her.
In the end I got her closer. In the beam of my headlamp, I saw her huge silhouette. She was broad, long, and her back was like an old trunk. It was a mirror carp, its scales gleaming like bronze coins.
I guided him into the landing net. The dense mesh arms closed around the monster.
The fish was mine.
I pulled the landing net onto the bank. On the mat, the carp looked majestic. A large, old body, almost black with age.
Lupa came over carefully. First she sniffed the landing net, then she moved closer to the mat. She did not growl, she did not bark, but there was respect in her stance. She raised her muzzle and gently, almost curiously, touched the fish’s mouth. It was as if she was making sure the creature was real and not just another shadow. Then she sat down beside the mat, a calm guardian.
That was the moment. I tore myself away from the carp and reached for the scales.
I hooked it onto the weighing sling. I zeroed the indicator. I lifted.
The numbers started to climb: 19… 20… 21… they stopped at 21.7 kilos.
I nearly fainted. I could literally feel all the air leaving my lungs. A new personal best. My record for that lake. A fish that had survived the storm, my impatience, and years of my expeditions.
A quick, professional photo session. Lupa, with no idea about the record, posed proudly beside the fish. She was part of the story.
I returned the fish to the water and held it by the tail until the powerful fin struck my palm.
She swam away slowly and with dignity.
The silence returned. I sank into the chair and, with trembling hands, pulled out a cigarette. This was the cigarette I had been waiting for. That smoke tasted like victory.
“21.7 kilos, Lupa,” I whispered and took a deep drink of coffee.
“Finally.”
CHAPTER VI
Guests
After the 21.7-kilo record, a different kind of silence settled in. It was a silence full of sunshine and deep inner calm. The rig returned to its place carrying a new, almost unbelievable weight of hope, but instead of staring fixedly at the alarms, I gave myself over to celebration.
I returned to the routine: coffee, a cigarette, Lupa in her run.
It was the seventh day of the expedition. The camp was already perfectly in order, the bivvy stood firm, the gear lay in its places, and I had already had time to grow into that landscape. I was beginning to think of the forest as a natural extension of the tent.
Lupa lay in the full sun on the dried gravel and barely lifted her head. From a distance, she looked like a perfect wolfish shadow. I was just checking the old, worn hooklinks.
At that moment, her ears twitched. She did not get up, but her nose went into full gear. Lupa did not rely on sight, she could smell strangers. After a moment, the fur on the back of her neck bristled and a quiet, deep vr-r-r came from her throat. It was a warning sound, worse than any bark. I knew what it meant: someone was on the territory.
I set the hooklink aside and stood up. I looked in the direction Lupa was staring. With some effort, I made out figures between the trees. It was not one person. There were two.
Lupa did not wait for a command. She sprang up and ran toward the path. She ran silently, as a Wolfdog should, only to burst into full barking a moment later, furious and open. There was something primal in that sound, something that must have stopped them dead in their tracks.
I set off after her. I was not afraid for safety, I knew Lupa was not aggressive without reason, but no stranger steps into my space without permission.
I made it all the way to the edge of the forest. Two young men, loaded down with spinning rods and backpacks, stood there as if frozen to the spot.
“Enough, Lupa! That’s enough!” I said firmly, but without anger.
The dog fell silent at once, but she did not move from the spot and kept the newcomers pinned in check.
“Good day,” I said from a distance. “Am I mistaken, or is this your water?”
The younger one, with frightened eyes, raised his hands.
“No, no, we just… heard that someone was here. We’re looking for a place to stay the night. But… what kind of dog is that? He looks like… a wolf.”
“That’s Lupa. She’s calm, but she guards the camp. You’re at a private swim, so you’ll have to find somewhere else for the night.”
The other one was bolder and more observant. His gaze slid toward my rods and the rod pod.
“An angler. Carp fishing. And that dog… Is it true you pulled out something big yesterday?”
So the news had already arrived. Even in the middle of the forest, the angling world has its own channels of communication.
“I had some luck,” I replied reluctantly. “But this is a closed-off spot.”
“Yeah… we heard. 21.7. Congratulations.”
When Lupa saw that the confrontation was over, she slowly came over to me and sat down by my leg. But the moment one of the men made a sudden move with his hand toward his backpack, she immediately let out the same low vr-r-r and her muscles tensed.
“Easy, Lupa.”
I stroked her.
“This is the reason why carp fishing on long expeditions is so… peaceful,” I said to the visitors, nodding toward Lupa. “She makes sure it stays that way.”
I saw them off. Lupa walked behind, and her presence was argument enough.
I went back to the chair. I lit a cigarette and poured myself some coffee. But that moment of celebration tasted a little different now. Satisfaction was mixed with irritation. The record had drawn attention, and that attention had disturbed the silence I had longed for.
I looked at Lupa, who had returned to her place and lay down with a heavy sigh.
“It’s not quiet anymore, is it, ginger?”
Instead of an answer, she gave me a gentle nudge in the shoulder with her wolfish nose.
Despite the success, I knew that those quiet, uninterrupted moments were worth more to me than any carp. And the hardest part of the expedition was still to come: solitude in the crowd of my own thoughts.
CHAPTER VII
Camp Kitchen and Well-Earned Peace
After the visit from the intruders and the emotional roller coaster that came with the record, the seventh day of the expedition was meant to be a day of complete release. The sun was warm, the wind had died for good. The reliable alarms were silent, but this time the lack of takes felt like a blessing.
For a while, I pulled one rig off the spot and gave the bottom room to breathe. It was time to feed both body and soul.
Carp fishing for a week or longer takes organisation. You cannot live on bars and tins alone. I pulled the ingredients for a well-earned lunch out of the travel fridge.
I went for something simple but warming, something that smells and tastes like home, hunter’s game goulash, a supply from autumn, with the addition of herbs I had gathered myself.
Cooking by the water is what I love on long expeditions almost as much as a take. It is meditation in motion. The sound of onions sizzling in the pan, the smell of stewed tomatoes, and behind it all the murmur of the forest.
Lupa came to life at once. The smell of food is the only thing that can draw her attention more reliably than a fish showing itself. She sat down a metre from the camping stove and put on the expression of the most humble and hungriest dog in the world.
“You have to wait, she-wolf,” I said, stirring with a wooden spoon. “Everything has its time.”
I was making the meal for her too. Lupa, being a wolfdog, has her own specific needs. Ordinary kibble was out of the question. I pulled out a piece of beef and cooked her a separate, nourishing meal in a second mess tin, with no seasoning. She was my partner, and her energy was key to our safety. Good food is an investment.
I watched her as she waited. She is unbelievably patient when she knows she is waiting for something good. It is the same patience I have to have when I am waiting for a run. There is a deep, wolfish wisdom in it: do not waste energy when you do not have to. Wait. But be ready.
When the goulash was ready, I turned off the gas.
Lupa first. I set the bowl down in front of her. She finished the food within a few minutes, then licked the bowl clean with satisfaction and, with a loud sigh, went back to her resting zone.
Then me. I sat down in the chair and set a plate of steaming goulash on the table. Hot, hearty, exactly what I needed after all those emotions.
And just at the moment when I was eating in complete concentration and savouring every bite, a single, sleepy beep came from the left alarm.
I looked at the receiver. The alarm flashed once and fell silent again.
It was not a run, just a touch. Maybe a carp had just moved onto my spot and brushed the line. Or maybe a smaller fish had simply passed close to the rig.
I was holding a fork with a piece of meat on it. I did not set it down. I did not jump up.
After the record, after the loss, after the storm, I had learned one thing: patience must not be thrown away. Adrenaline is a trap. A fish that is taking has to take with conviction. If it was only a touch, it will come back in a moment, or move away.
I put the fork into my mouth. Chewed, swallowed. Lupa, who had lifted her head at that single sound, saw that I was calm. She settled down again and half-closed her eyes.
I sat and waited. Exactly the way I had sat and waited for the record. The fish would not go anywhere just because I did not jump up right away. But haste would have cost me my focus.
I waited ten minutes. The alarm stayed silent.
I went back to the food. The goulash tasted excellent. Silence over the water, a well-fed dog, and a hot lunch. The record had been beautiful, but this moment, solitude in complete peace, was worth every sleepless night.
CHAPTER VIII
Solitude in the Crowd
It was the penultimate evening of the expedition. The sun, like a huge orange float, was sinking into the line of the forest. Time had started moving at its normal pace again, and I could feel the forest slowly loosening its grip on me.
I sat in the chair, savouring the last cigarette and poured the rest of the coffee from the thermos. It was only lukewarm by now, but it had that familiar smoky taste of tiredness and contentment.
My thoughts were swirling in my head. Twelve days by the water are like a year in ordinary life. My head was full of a crowd of memories: the roar of the storm, the snapping line, the frantic scream of the receiver, and in the end that majestic mirror carp on the mat.
I caught 21.7 kilos. A new record. I could start chasing more kilos now, set myself a target of 22 kilos, 25 kilos… and I most likely will. Ambition in fishing is like oxygen, essential.
But that record taught me something else as well.
I remembered the panic when the lightning flashed. I did not lose the fish because of a bad knot, but because of fear. I landed the record fish because I kept my breathing under control and managed to stay patient. It turned out that the process matters more than the result. More important than twenty-two kilos is a perfectly fought battle. A perfect strike. A perfectly placed rig.
I looked at Lupa. She was lying right beside me, staring into the fading light. Her breathing was shallow and steady. Lupa was not thinking about the record. She did not understand the weight, and ambition least of all. She was simply living in a perfectly present moment. Her calm was her greatest wisdom.
It was she, that wolfish shadow, who was teaching me that I did not have to chase anything. It was enough to be ready. Lupa does not torment herself over whether tomorrow it will be a mouse or a rabbit, she keeps watch and rests in between. In her calm, I found the discipline I had lacked during the storm.
My feeding had been methodical from the very start of the expedition, a steady level. Every day the same dose of boilies, not too much, not too little. And that steady rhythm is my new record.
Persistence, not desperation.
Instead of thinking about the chase, I was now dreaming of being able to repeat that state of inner silence. The record was proof that the technique works. The silence was proof that I work.
I knew that back home, in the noise of the city, that calm would dissolve. The bills, the phones, and the rush would return. That was exactly why that last evening was so precious. I was alone, but a crowd of thoughts ruled in my head, and I had managed to tame them and set them in order. The silence I was hearing was not the silence of the forest. It was the silence in my head.
I decided that I would not be taking the rigs out again during the night. I would leave only the ones in the water that had been lying there since the afternoon, with the hope of a farewell take. The rest of the gear could wait to be packed.
For the last time, I got up to check the lines and tighten the tent pegs. Lupa lifted her head as she watched me moving about.
“We’re winding down, ginger. Last night,” I whispered.
I went back to the chair. The sound of the dying cigarette was the last noise I wanted to hear that evening. I leaned my head back. Above us stretched a star-filled sky, and from the water came the occasional splash. Silence was waiting.
CHAPTER IX
The Last Dance and the Return to the Crowd
The last night came. After that philosophical reflection and after deciding to give up aggressive feeding, I lay down on the carp bedchair with a feeling of calm. I fell asleep almost immediately, and the silence in the tent was broken only by the faint hum of the lines being tightened by the wind and Lupa’s steady breathing.
I had the feeling it was the deepest sleep since the start of the whole expedition. The sleep of a winner who had proved to himself that he had what it takes.
I was woken by a sound that sent me to my feet with my heart pounding. It was not a carp run. It was a muffled, broken note, a sound full of strength and majesty.
The alarm on the left rod, the one placed closest to the old flooded trees, was screaming like mad, but the runs were short, brutal, and broken. The fish was taking yards of line, stopping, then surging off again, as if it were wrestling with something under the water.
“Lupa!” I shouted, but the dog was already on her feet and let out a single loud, warning woof!
I ran out of the tent. The darkness was thick and the rod was bent right to its limit.
I struck hard, and the resistance I felt was harder than with any carp. This was no tank with fins. This was a floating log. The fish was driving for the bottom and looking for mud.
The fight was both physical and technical. I knew I had a catfish on the hook. Only he can fight like this. He had pulled my rig closer to the snags, so I had to pump with force and give him no chance to hide. After several minutes that felt like an eternity, a huge whiskered maw appeared on the surface in the beam of my headlamp.
He was magnificent. He was over a metre long.
I pulled him onto the mat and Lupa came over to it, this time not with curiosity, but with respect. She growled softly at that black, slippery mass that was letting out muffled sounds like a low grumble. A catfish is a predator and Lupa, gentle though she is, is a Wolfdog. She could feel his strength and wildness.
A quick measurement: 120 cm.
A farewell reward from the lake. A fish that showed there is always something in the water you do not expect. He swam off fast and hard, flicking his wide tail as if to say, “Goodbye.”
I went back to the tent and lit my last cigarette. The coffee was waiting. The catfish, the record carp, the storm. A perfect ending.
Farewell to the Territory
The sun came up. It was packing day.
In carp fishing, there is no worse and more dispiriting job than packing up. In the morning, after the last take, you have to pack away that whole temporary life. Setting up camp was a ritual of creation, packing is a ritual of ending.
I started with the rods. For the last time, I wiped down the blanks and took off the reels. Then came the kitchen: pans, the stove, the leftovers of dry food. Everything that had still smelled of life yesterday was now turning into a heavy, dirty load.
The worst part was packing the tent. The overwrap was wet with the morning dew, the bivvy soaked through with the smell of damp and smoke. I was stuffing it all into the bags, and the memories along with it. What had been a home turned into a pile of holdalls, boxes, and stands.
But despite the exhausting work and the pain in my back, I was smiling. I knew that the beauty of those moments was the price of that effort. And that packing, however unpleasant it is, is also a promise of return.
When in the end only the bare ground where the camp had stood was left, I walked over to Lupa.
After her morning meal, she stretched lazily.
“It’s time to say goodbye,” I whispered.
She knew what to do. She walked over to the place where the tent had stood, lifted her hind leg, and marked the territory. It was her wolfish farewell, her signature: “We were here. This is our place. We will come back.” To me, it was more than just a symbolic gesture. It was a reservation of the swim for next year.
I got into the car. After one last checking look at the lake, Lupa jumped onto the back seat.
I released the handbrake. When the car started moving and the old field ruts began rolling beneath it again, I saw in the rear-view mirror what I carry home from every expedition. Not 21.7 kilos of flesh, but 21.7 kilos of calm and patience.
I was going back to the crowd. But I was going back different.
EPILOGUE
In the Silence That Remained
Returning to civilisation is never easy. After several days of silence, the hiss of tyres on asphalt, horns, and the everyday noise of the city feel aggressive and alien. And yet I was coming back richer. Not by a carp, that record fish was already swimming again in its lake, but by a deeper understanding of this passion.
Carp fishing, especially the long kind, teaches a person that they carry two wolves inside them: the wolf of haste and the wolf of patience. The wolf of haste is the one that cost me the rig during the storm, the one that drove me to chase the result instead of enjoying the present moment. The wolf of patience is the one that allowed me to wait for the record, the one that now lets me savour coffee at home in my chair without thinking about the unpaid bill.
Lupa, curled up on the sofa and pretending to be a house dog, is the living embodiment of that second rule. She teaches that stillness is a form of vigilance. That calm is not the absence of action, but readiness for it. When she lies there, she is keeping watch. When I sat by the water, I was waiting.
The weight of 21.7 kilos was beautiful. But the weight of that turning point, of that lesson, is immeasurable. I understood that what I was truly carrying back from the forest was not the fish on the mat or the dirty gear, but the ritual.
Every expedition is like a meditation with a line in the water. It demands humility before the elements, respect for the opponent, and discipline in waiting. It teaches that the moment you think you already know how it is done, nature will send a storm or a catfish a hundred and twenty centimetres long to remind you that there is always more to discover.
Home is only a stop along the way. Real life, the pure kind, untouched by haste, is there where black coffee and the smoke of a cigarette after a job well done are waiting. It is there where the alarm sounds in the night.
And above all, it is there where a wolfish shadow keeps watch beside me on the bank.
I do chase records, that is true. But more than twenty-five kilos, what I long to repeat is that state: the inner silence that comes in the moment when you know everything is in its place and you are ready.
And that is a reward that cannot be weighed.
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