Yakut traditional fishing _Munkha_ Republic of Sakha Yakutia

Practised in Yakutia for generations, there is only one way to learn the art of ice fishing as Yakutia school children have discovered.

The main rule of munkha ice fishing is to share the catch with everyone.

It was very much a case of ‘like father, like son’ as children in Yakutia took to the ice to learn the time-honoured, and difficult, skill of traditional fishing. Known as munkha, it involves brigades of men coming together to make holes in the ice in order to find and hunt the lake carp swimming below.

It has been practised for years in this part of the world and the art shows no signs of dying out, having been passed down the generations from father to son.

Our pictures show dozens of boys in the village of Oi, in the Khangala Ulus of Yakutia – also known as the Sakha Republic - being given a special lesson at school.

Joined by their fathers and grandfathers, who had taken a day off work specially, they are shown how to catch the fish for the first time.