Lucia is a part of the Christmas celebrations here in Sweden. At December 13 every year, we start Christmas of by celebrating the catholic Saint Lucia with a parade. It’s a mishmash of old Christian traditions and heathen rites having to do with chasing away the darkness of the season, and at that same time, the darkness of evil, by bringing the light back to the world. The light barer, a girl symbolizing Lucia, dressed in a white alba, crowned with the flickering candles, leads a procession followed by her “maids”, a group of girls dressed in a similar way. Some guys dressed up like a KKK lynch mob, called “The Star boys”, and then some scattered Santa’s / gnomes and Gingerbread men. This might sound strange to you, but this is a part of how we celebrate Christmas here. Hey, I don’t excuse it, I just tell it like it is.
Oh, and there are warm spiced wine with cinnamon, cardamom and bitter orange peel (Glogg/Glühwein) Gingerbread cookies and saffron bread or saffron rolls to go with it. (It is actually really good).
The events described below is a degenerate form of the Lucia celebrations gone all wrong in the minds of a few sea trout addicts from the fly-fishing gang “The Ravens”.
Follow the guys on their first annual Christmas sea trout run. By the time you will read this, already an annual event.


It all started out a joke of sorts. Good fun that’s all. Just shooting the breeze with buddies. Of course, us “Ravens” (Olyckskorpar) have a special talent for cooking up bad ideas. Especially the kind you just happens to spit out over the phone and don’t have to answer to. At least not until later.
-How about a St. Lucia celebration in float tubes? Bring the old gang back together. Whack on some Santa caps and those white cones, fight some sea trout, eat saffron rolls and gingerbread cookies and drink Glühwein until we throw up?
-Well, I guess we could do that…
And that was not really a no.
And then, two days later we are there. At least some of us. A few. The dumb ones. The meek that shall inherit the earth. Me, Bazz and Matt on a nocturnal drive all the way from Stockholm, through the city of Uppsala and on to the Gavle region coastline. Why do I always have to open my yap as soon as there is a glimmer in the old sparkplugs?
The Lucia celebration goes cold right from get go. No lit candles, just three hopeless helpless Santa’s, already half pissed on Glühwein as we reach the water, intensively paddling about like swivels not to freeze to certain death. Icicle rods. No Gingerbread men, no Star boys. Definitely no Lucia or any maids to warm by. Coffee breaks and jumping up and down on slippery, frosty rocks is a necessity for survival. Emptying the bottle of Glühwein, eating saffron rolls frozen solid.
But we do see a falling star sweep across the afternoon sky. No other people, no sea trout. A couple of eagles are the only thing stirring all pale grey day.
Somehow it is still fun. And beautiful, and in the break a small ice glazed Christmas tree stands alone against the awful winter storms.
Bazz, thinks he might have to be through celebrating now, his lips are just as blue as his eyes, and he can not feel his legs anymore. Matt is missing his snuff, and where the hell did I put my knife anyways…
Yeah, we should probably throw in the towels before this idea leaves us with permanent scars. A float tube bender is not to be recommend this time of year. You will end up a renegade snowman, somewhere of the straits of Finland.


Back in Stockholm the phone gets me in the doorway. It is Jimmie. “Out tomorrow? Usual spot? At five by the gas station then? Well I guess I just have to hide the alarm clock way in there under the bed so I must get up to turn it of.”
That day too, we draw the short straw. Another blank run. But what a day. One of those few you will take with you all the way to your grave, and while you are at it, down there in the coffin with you, to keep you warm for eternity.
The morning arrives in a deep red sunrise, mist and quicksilver frost covering the rocky shore. Minnows sizzling around over sand flats and clear cold water. Two contacts at least, and a few fish jumping. Silver popcorns. Big silver popcorns.
And as the sun sets again on the short day, the cowboys riding into the sunset are nowhere to be found, but the float tubes do their floating alright, along the path of light, and straight in to the setting sun.In the days to follow, we transform to wintertime sea trout junkies. A lot of trips to the coastline trying to score. Shooting up silverdreams. Hooked on this one bad idea. Scales covering our thoughts.
Jimmie is working on a house out on Varmdo, and I do not start teaching until 8 a clock AM, so we have time for a short run every morning.  The days are good to us in all aspects except for delivering fish. We see fish and get strikes, but for some reason we do not manage to hook them. One morning I sleep in and is awakened by a mms around seven. A picture of Jimmie, grinning like a kid at a circus who has just eaten his own weight in pink cotton candy. He is holding a chrome bright trout in his arms. It looks heavy.
I walk straight out of bed and on to the car. Pulling my underwear and gear on in motion. For some reason I come to think of firemen.
That day, I too get a trout, but my trout is not as big as Jimmies. It is smaller than Jimmies, much smaller. But it is a trout, and that is fun, so I pretend size is not everything. “At least it is good to be out in the great outdoors and….bla, bla, bla, bla, bla…

Next day I pass on the morning fishing, and go for a afternoon run with Vladimir instead. He has a shore thing going at a small bay up north with a soft current tugging, so it is filled with coloured spawning fish.
Once we get there, they are playing and jumping high, but it is just false spawning. Fish cruising these waters a few weeks every year before realizing they are in the wrong place and disappears out to open waters again.
Vladimir gets his first trout before I even hit the water. “Ho, ho,ho”, he laughs as the Russian Santa he is, and pries up a striking 8 pound sea trout buck on his 2 weight rod like it was small fries and the kind of thing that happens daily. I get him to wear the Santa-cap I carry in the zip-side-pocket of the float tube, just to fuck with him, and shoot of a couple of quick pics. The Santa’s cap has been there in the tube, since the Lucia fishing trip. The cap no one wanted to wear. Mama Santa’s cap, with white braids. So now I experience my first “Santa mom catch and release” moment, when this seasons largest trout disappears down the murky water before she, I mean he, laughs his Russian Santa laugh again and says;
-Yeah, and so, we go catch another one.
Hellfire and damnation.
When twilight arrives I finally hook a decent fish. A female, half bright at least, and she gives up a good fight. Finally she swims straight into the net and I can hold her in the water as Vladimir paddles up alongside.
-Aha, nice.
Santa’s cap on again and Vladimir gets to be the photographer. The braids have become wet and then frozen, erect like antennas. I rip them of and tuck them away, extract the fish from the net and force my cold cheeks into a smile. I am used to take crap from the editor of the magazine I writ for, because I always look so grumpy on pics. I have tried to explain I am the kind of guy who smiles on the inside, with heart and eyes instead of showing teeth, but I know for a fact he think I am lying.

Two days later we are at the island of Galo. Vladimir catch fish. I loose fish. After his third one, he mutters something about things being a bit slow an I can not help to think just how slow he would think it to be, if I let the air out of his float tube and he went balloon-riding straight towards the horizon. Shit, I am only kidding. Vladimir is a fly-fishing master. He gets fish because he does everything right, I don’t get any fish because…well, you get the picture.
The day before the day now, before D-day, Christmas. Christmas dinner at work and a busted fan in the car brings the story up to date of the very morning of Christmas Day.
Me, Jimmie and his friend Sewe, crawls yawning and dog day tired out of our cars. It feels as early as the dawn of time. Stone age early.

We get to see the Christmas morning come to life, all shining and glittering over the ocean. A frosty beach sparkles with every star of the milky way. We put the tubes in and slide out in to the steaming water. It would be so fun to be able to spread some joy on a day like this. A Christmas card. A “Send all” mms with a pic of the largest shiniest sea trout the world has ever seen. From me to all the buddies. And something to go with it like; “Merry fucking Christmas, Donald Duck can go fuck himself”. Something like that. From me to everyone. A very merry Christmas.

I do not long for a traditional family dinner with a fortyeight dish smorgasbord, and a tree holding presents underneath the lowest branches. I want warm blueberry soup and a sea trout as bright as lightning under a snowy pine on a coastline rock. That is all. Now, is that really to much to ask? Santa? God? Someone….Hello.Helloooooo
Aha, and now snow is falling too. Well, how about that?

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