Ayu fishing by the tomozuri method does not begin whenever anyone feels like it. It opens on a set date. In Gujo it opened on the first of June. About fifteen hundred people went into the river that day.

The cooperative's own record of that morning is precise in a way that tells you exactly what people here pay attention to. Water temperature seventeen degrees, air nineteen. The river down about thirty centimeters, running clear. Fifteen fish of fourteen to eighteen centimeters was a normal morning, and someone took nearly fifty.

The count of wild ayu at the river mouth, taken a few days before, came to around a million and eighty thousand fish, with some already grown to twenty centimeters.

The ayu of the Nagara river is part of a designated Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System, which is an unusual thing for a fish to be. Gujo ayu took the grand prize at the eleventh Kiki-Ayu tasting competition. What is caught goes onto a skewer, is salted at the fins, and is cooked slowly over charcoal until the skin turns fragrant. The year before, twice as many people had gone in on the opening day. A date on a river is where the year starts, and everyone here knows which date it is.