In December, 2010 in Riga - since a few days it made temperatures under them 5°F.
The river Daugava which bathes the city had just frozen.
Under the bridge Vansu, not very far from the mouth of this river and the line of maritime free waters, one of the first winter fishermen had ventured, in spite of the risks that the ice is still too thin to bear its weight (but in the middle of winter it happens that cars can venture without any problem on the river).
The views below spread out over 5-6 hours (from the end of morning to the beginning of evening).
And in the historic section, a paint showing that one century ago this activity of fishing via a hole in the ice was then rather common in all the French or European parts of the country to the cold winters.
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Below an article of the dictionary Furetière of 1690, a very big wealth of vocabulary for fishing nets, what reflects the importance which was then given to this activity. Most of these terms are not used any more.
FISHING. Action by which we take some fish. Go fishing mussels, herring, whales. This man gets along well the fishing, is skillful in the fishing. The pearl fishing is made by means of the dives. This pond is in fishing, we let sell the water by the bung.
The Prescriptions made several regulations on the fishing, and forbid several nets and machines to fish. François I and of Henry II forbid ) the roborin bottom, the figure furnished, valois, kernels, the pinsoir, the truble with wood, the bourache, the charter, the stepladder, the pawl, the rouable, the clameci, faissine, bundles of sticks, bald, sprinkled bow nets, lines of length to menus fishhooks.
The new Prescription of 1679. Adds it the gilles, the trammel nets, the ferrets, the sparrow hawks, chalons, cut down, &c. As also forbids to bouiller with faces and planes so much under chevrins, roots, willows, wicker, dens, in the arcs of bridges, neither in the herbs, nor to put lines with failures and lively baits, to put braye in put nor queure, and as we add to it boussel thick, set to carry chains and clarions batelets, and to go to the fare and to the barandage, and to go fishing in nouës with nets to take the fish, and the spawn which was carried by overflowing there; as also forbids to throw in rivers no lime, nux vomica, shell of East, mummy, and other drugs and charms, hardly of physical punishment.
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A FISHING IN WINTER,
BY mister PEHR WICKENBERG
The Magasin pittoresque of 1839, illustration of the text below
This picture gave the feeling of the cold to those who looked at it. The ice was imitated to make illusion. We did not grow tired of admiring with which infinite patience, with which sharpness of brush, the artist had known how to reproduce all the details of this winter scene, sad and naked. We liked to study alternately the pale and blue reflections of the plain surface, the white cracks, the small detached, broken, transparent pieces, in irregular facets, glittering in different points following the different way struck them the light. Distant severe and harmonious also attracted the sight and served as transition to rise to a melancholic and icy(frosty) sky as the river.
The characters were of not much importance; but they had themselves a lot of nature. The old fisherman, his pipe in the mouth, the hands locked into his thick gloves, was absorbed well and applied well. The children and the dog waited with a felt well curiosity for their meal which happened around the fishhook.
This fishing, often the only one gets fresh ideas during the winter of many of the poor families of our northern parts of the country, is so simple as she needs no explanation. We practise it with a little more art in the North of America. The Indian fisherman suspends in the water, at the end of a thread, a piece of wood, cut and colored so as to represent a fish, and decorated with a tail and with real fins. It is a trap tightened at the inhabitants of the lake about similar to these false pigeons who we see placed in sentinel on roofs.
Of other hand, the Indian holds his line. There are sometimes whole days in this activity. If the cold is so rigorous that the surface of the hole freezes with too much speed, he draws up a small tent in cloth, leaky of a hole in the summit to let penetrate into the light under the water; it is more a means to guarantee the eyes of the brilliant brightness of the snow or the beams of the sun echoed by the ice.
Of Riga, in these mini-series of photos of the week, see also :
Photography of the week 09 of 2013
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