Our return journey was quick. We flew back south - looking over all those places where we traveled past for the past 10 days - with fair amount of troubles and improvisations - and landed in Moscow in less than 2hours.

No great fishing trip but, as I said upfront, it was a good family trip - of a kind.

- Back

We took a boat back to Olenegorsk, and made our final train ride to Murmansk.

Yes, we traveled from Moscow all the way to Murmansk by land - which was an experience in itself.

Fishing without a local knowledge is challenging, especially so when it comes to fishing in a lake. We only caught small perch and trout but, oh, how stress-free and enjoyable it was on our own!

We stood there speechless for a minute but anyhow no harm. He was not a guide but just another angler competing for fish.

By then we had found out marching thru the bush and marsh with Misa wasn't easy. So we decided to stay there in the same stretch, and quietly fish. The stream had fair depth and current, but we couldn't see any surface feeding activities.

In a boat with the guide Igor, we went out fishing - this day we chose the river that runs into the lake at its southern end. It took nearly1hour but was pleasant, thanks to the settled weather.

The water was tea colored and the river bed was very slippery with uneven boulders. Very carefully I waded around - half a step at a time. Thank God I didn't have my fishing guide shooting silver bullets over my head.

After a few hours' of swinging wet flies, I managed to catch a decent trout. Not a trophy but a genuinely wild, native trout of the arctic.

If the value of a success is measured by the painful process leading to it, well, I had a great success again this time.

Leaving the boat, we had to hike up along the river for quite a distance to get to the fishing point. Our guide Igor didn't mind that. In fact he was so eager to fish that he walked way faster than we can, leaving us lost and struggling in the woods. Half an hour later we eventually found him - meticulously bombarding hia favourite pool with his shiny spoons already.

You guessed it. That was the end of my politeness which probably is one of the purposeless trait of us Japanese and I shouted in my poor Russian without minding the gramatical correctness ''Stop it Igor. Are you professional guide or what? Is this your job or pastime? If you want to fish on, just walk away and please yourself!!''

He looked down apologetically and said ''understood''. And guess what, he indeed walked away to please himself!!! 　(ﾟДﾟ;)