Kiev - "Make no mistake, they are down there," whispered Kiev fisherman Maksim Gorbunov, as he searched for pike signs. "But a 'crocodile,' he's smart, think about it, thousands of people trying to hook him all those years and here he's still swimming around," Gorbunov said, with a trace of respect. A lifetime Kiev resident Gorbunov, 58, spends most his days deftly placing lures of his own manufacture in proximity of reeds lining the Dnipro, Europe's fourth-largest river.
Gorbunov's target is the Esox Lucius, or Northern Pike, a carnivorous fish fairly common in Ukraine's waterways, despite industrial pollution and the increasing urbanisation of the former Soviet state.
A pike above three kilograms is rare and known in the local fishing slang as a "crocodile."
"You have got to put your lure in there, next to the weeds, get it down two meters or so, and swim it past and make it look real," Gorbunov said. "A dumb young pike, he'll take a piece of tinned meat on a bent pin ... but a mature one, a big one, for those you need to give them a theatre show."
Dozens of fishermen, mostly men but some women too, dotted the Dnipro shore line on a recent work day afternoon. The best sites, stones piled into makeshift piers, had been occupied since 6 a.m., the occupants said.
More anglers floated in boats a bit further out into the waterway, sinkers set over preferred spots, motionless beneath wheeling gulls and black-and-white crows.
But silent fishing in pristine nature, it was not.
Jet skis zoomed by, as did motorboats with and without skiers. A band warmed up in a gazebo for a wedding reception, children were shouting and babies were crying at a playground - all within a few hundred metres of Gorbunov's spot.
Rush hour traffic growled in the background along the nearby 1.5-kilometre-long Moskovsky Most, one of seven bridges connecting Kiev's left and right banks across the Dnipro.
"The fish, they are used to all that noise," Gorbunov said. "Doesn't bother them at all, but it bugs me sometimes."
For a good three kilometres upstream from the bridge, on the edge of the Dnipro as it sweeps through Kiev's overbuilt and increasingly expensive Obolon district, on most days rain or shine, stand fishermen.
Fishermen seem to be everywhere in the Ukrainian capital: Lugging kit in backpacks through public transport, hunkered down out on the water's edge out of sight of security in Kiev's elite Koncha Zaspa district, or just waiting patiently at almost every city park body of water at least theoretically deep enough to contain a fish.
"No one knows exactly how many fishermen we have in Kiev," said Ruslan Beloborod, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Association of Fishermen. "But we are pretty sure the number is around one in four citizens, so figure close to one million."
Many are weekend hobbyist fishermen, Beloborod said, and more than a few fish not because their quest is a finny trophy, but because many Kievites are poor and fish can supplement a diet.
Despite its size and pollution problems, Kiev's northern location and limited heavy industry makes for plenty of insects and water, supporting constant and distinctly edible populations of bream, perch, zander, and carp.
"Poaching is a serious problem, sure, there are even guys that will go underwater with aqualungs and spear trophy fish for restaurants," Beloborod said. "But even without them, you can't deny that fishing as a sport is an extremely popular pastime in our city ... and maybe even the most popular one."
Hunting and fishing stores can be found on most major Kiev streets. One of the city's largest open air markets, adjacent to a Dnipro River metro station, is devoted solely to fishing kit.
Valery Lobanovsky, the legendary coach of Dynamo Kiev during the 1970s and 1980s, called fishing "the best relaxation I know" and stocked ponds at the side's training camp with carp and perch for his players.
"When you are in the fresh air, talking with people face-to-face about something you are interested in, the internet can't give you that," said Serhy Petrushov as he cast into a football pitch-sized lake in Kiev's Holosievsky park. "Fishing can."
Petrushov's bait was, he said, a "secret" mixture of worms, dirt, flour, and spit. His target was the Silurus Glanis, sometimes known as the European Wels, and among Kiev fishermen as a catfish growing in extreme instances to 50 kilograms.
"We are not going to find something that big in here," he said. "You want to see what's in the water, you have to wait."
