The Tiny River Alne - Sisu and Simultanagnosia

Sisu, the movie, well my brother told me about this "First Blood on Steroids" was his words and boy was he right.

During the last days of World War II (btw HS2 will be more expensive than World War Two 10 times the budget as originally costed out and already scaled back massively) a solitary prospector crosses paths with Nazis on a scorched-earth retreat in northern Finland. When the soldiers decide to steal his gold, they quickly discover they just tangled with no ordinary miner.

It's brain out entertainment basically, and fantastically (but not upsettingly) violent, the bountiful dismemberments and impalements heightened by squelchy sound design, and there are brilliant practical effects it’s a prosthetics playground.

Ultimately, though, it’s all about the effortlessly charismatic Jorma Tommila, a walking snarl, a granite face, a body more scar than skin, the whites of his eyes sometimes mad, sometimes messianic shining even brighter when encased in a face caked in blood and mud. He gives the viewer one hell of a time.

The movie isn't hiding anything it's serving up stone-cold multiplex mayhem, Sisu makes no bones about it this is a film about one mad bastard killing a gazillion Nazis. It’s almost impossible not to love it. Now what is not impossible to love and that is the River Alne 5 minutes from me mainly because of the surprises it throws up from time to time. 

Hmmmm ? 🤔

The latest being the 12 ounce dace that turned up out the blue and got me thinking about is there any bigger milling around in these untapped waters. The Alne fishing so much better when the river is carrying colour. You would have thought when the river is strong tea coloured certain fish such as chub would be switched off, but not here, they revel in the conditions. 

I don't know what that is to be honest, there is predation here and it's a small river after all. There is a resident otter and cormorants believe it or not frequent here for its not so rich pickings.

I expected the river to be more coloured when I got there because recent rain had boosted it's levels and it was just in the fall when I got there for this short after work session.

There is more rain on the rain though, in-fact as I type this it is blowing a gale and it's tipping it down so I'm hoping the tea colour returns as it does make a difference to the fishing. Still with a link ledger rod and some bread I'm sure something would be biting.

I pre-baited a couple of swims with bread mash and headed up to the swim where I caught the big dace from. I've a dedicated rod now with scaled down tactics because the chub set-up was overkill but I could land a nice dace and chub anyway with new set-up.

One of the big kamikaze trout maybe not but the chub don't grow massive here so it's more than man enough to cope with one of those. The water was a dark grey colour and had a couple of foot of visibility when the bread fell through the water column.

It was clear when fishing the first swim though that the only fish that were present probably minnows picking at the bread with the small indications on the tip.

In the end after an hour or so I decided to up sticks and head down to the primed swim and that's when my fortuned changed, because after a chublet took the bread on the drop the next fish was a trout that decided it wouldn't mind some bread too.

The next fish didn't take long either but this time the tip pulled round with such a violent manner there was only one culprit on the end, and yes a nice chub.

It get a cracking scrap on light gear as well so the scaling down was definitely worth doing as it took me all over the swim. By now the wind had picked up and after the Wife gave me a number 2 buzz cut before Spain I was starting to feel the chill, so after a bitless half an hour I decided to end the session early and head back when the levels and colour is more conducive for the dace.