I keep this log so that every winter on the ice around Šiauliai starts with the ice itself, and so that the little I have learned about perch, roach and staying warm is written down before I forget it again.

I have fished the lakes around Šiauliai since my father walked me out onto Talša with a hand auger and a flask of tea, which was longer ago than I like to count. The log itself started in January 2020, in a winter when the ice never became safe at all, and its first page is a list of mornings when I stood on the shore, looked, and went home again. That page is still the most useful one.

Most entries come from three waters. Talša is in the city, and I can walk to it from Lieporiai before work. Rėkyva, on the southern side of the city, is big, shallow and brown with bog water, and its ice behaves differently from one bay to the next. Ginkūnai pond, out to the north-east, is small and sheltered, and it is where I go when the wind is up.

I am an ordinary angler, not a guide, and nothing here is a promise that any piece of ice is safe on any day. Ice changes by the hour and by the metre. The thickness figures in the log are what I measured with a tape through a drilled hole, where I stood, that morning. Check your own, every time, and go with someone who knows the water.