XVI World Ice Fishing Championship

January 27, 2019

Anglers prepare their equipment during the XVI World Ice Fishing Championship at the Shiroka Polyana dam near Batak on January 26, 2019. - They battled with snow drifts and waded in knee-deep slush to get to their competition ground on a frozen lake in Bulgaria's southern Rhodope mountains. The world's ice angling pros converged this weekend on Shiroka polyana lake at an altitude of 1,500 metres above sea level to vie for the world ice fishing title. Fifteen countries have sent teams to the 16th Ice Fishing World Championship this year -- Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech republic, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States. After a week of trainings at nearby dams and lakes, the 150 competitors in their astronaut-looking outfits and rubber boots stepped on the ice on January 26, for the first round of the two-day championship.

A chosen seventy-five anglers dug holes in the ice with hand augers and remained bent over them fishing with their small palm rods for three hours. The aim was to catch as many fish as they can -- mainly tiny perches and roaches.

The rest of their team mates and captains gathered around the competition's five sectors to encourage and cheer them and there were also quite a few referees and spectators eager to see how the pros do it. "The idea is to have more fish than anyone else as a team and be a world champion -- as simple as that. To find out if you are wiser than the fish," Finland's team captain Elisa Saarela told AFP. And as competitors were mostly catching fish that were smaller than their palms, she highlighted that small fish bring even bigger pleasure."When the fish is smaller, it's much harder to get it. Bigger fish is much more easy to catch. If you catch a big amount of small fish, you are very professional," Saarela explained.

The new ice fishing world champion and the individual winner who caught the most fish will become known after a second day of fishing. Jiji Press-AFP