When I first started, this website could only be accessed via my New Zealand website (angle.co.nz) and in my first one or two mockoposts I nearly lied about fishing (see archive options to your right). Since we went global, I kind of neglected the jolly reality that some people out there may be not unlike myself at all: they may enjoy a good fishing tale, be it true or not, be it theirs or mine (the latter are the best).
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Long time ago, on another continent, I used to do TV stories and even docmentaries. I directed, produced and even shot some of them in a lonly place where you can only go by boat: Sulina, in the Danube Delta. I hope I could help then some people who deserved more than they were getting. Sulina was my amour, my dream holiday destination at a time when I could choose any other far more cnfortable spot on this wee planet. I did not invent the “Sulina, mon amour” slogan and by no means am I writing a commercial story here.
There were good and bad times but all folk I met in Sulina were cool plus: Nenea Tudor, Dori the Captain, Cristi the Wild One and many others. One day I was virtually kidnapped in the street and forced, together with my cameraman, to join the local celebration of their church. On that day of August the 30th, 1996, I was so stuffed with food that it may have been the only party whenI was left with no room to drink a mere pint of beer. I also met in Sulina a nightmare of a guy guy who was to me (and still is to boat loads of amateurs) a fishing guru when it comes to carp and other coarse fresh water fish.
That’s the stern of his dinghy (don’t think he’s trawling, no, no, he’s not even drifting, he would be beached with his bow and the rods; lines and rigs would be virtually still):
This is how he camps in the only European aquatic unspoiled paradise I’ve ever known, the Danube Delta, a magic place not far away from Sulina – for those of you who have Google Maps, it’s cheaper to get there Internet way. Don’t even think that the mist is made of Russian vodka and that the blokes in those tents might be asleep in the early hours of the morning – no way: they are all fishing on the other side:
Yet the only one who ever catches real wild carp is my mate Mircea, whom I haven’t seen in ten years and whom I miss like those Mustad hooks I couldn’t find after we last went fishing together… or were they Gamakatsu and he was the one who couldn’t find them?
The best part is how to actually cook this modest carp, but this is another story.
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Should you want to have a look around and catch a fish or two, give me a buzz and I may put you onto my mate. But you’ll never be taken to the best spots Sulina has to offer. An old pirate saying goes: “If we told you, we would have to kill you.” The only secret I can share with you is a glimpse of what’s happening at the stern of our boat and that may explain why you won’t catch much at all:
Execpt for one, I swear for the innocent copyright of all the photos on this mockopost: they belong to Mircea. I only censored the ones with the bigger…carps.
Ten years on and 12,000 miles away, Sulina remains mon amour.