"Everyone should believe in something; I believe I'll go fishing." - Henry David Thoreau
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| Fixing the spot light |
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| John and Scott |
The sun left us to fend for ourselves in the dark, following
only the sonar, gps, other fancy gadgets, and the spot light on the water. It was kind of an eerie
feeling as you are speeding through the dark thinking you have nothing but open sea in front of you and suddenly you
spot a car drive by perpendicular to the path of the boat only seeing its headlights. We had gotten close to the shore, but
still a few hundred feet away and it was a strategic set up for the nets.
Without landmarks for a reference if felt like that car was flying like a hovercraft.
We were on a gill netting boat, so Scott dropped the line
while John drove the boat perpendicular to the shore. We waited about an hour,
cooking some steaks in the mean time, before we began to reel in the net and
check out our catch. Scott wore protective glasses with his rubbers because it
isn’t just fish that swim into the lines, jellyfish do too. And their tentacles
can flick at you as they bounce on the incoming net and sting you, as John
found out the hard way. Slowly and quite spaced apart our fish were pulled into
the boat, their gills tangled in the green webbing and Scott shook them out to
the ground. Our first cast rounded up 7 salmon. That’s not a lot for the amount
of fuel it took us to get out there, but for John and I it was fun. We cast a
second time and only rounded up three, but many more jellyfish, one which got
John in the eye as he tried to shake it loose from the net. The pain lasted for
a few days, but he persevered through the night determined to get the full
fishing experience.
The boys then began to clean. The first cleaning happened
after we cast the second net. Both clad in yellow rubbers with extra tough
boots became team working the gutting. The remainder of the jellyfish that
actually did fall off the net before it wound up on the giant coil were pushed
back to sea through a hole near the floor of the boat. Scott worked out
beheading the fish, most of which had died already, and made a cut through the
belly to remove the majority of the innards. I expected the process to look
savage with brutish slicing, but he made it look almost artistic like he was
carving a masterpiece. And he was fast. He would then toss the headless,
gutless fish at John who then would rinse out and fine clean the fish with a
hose connected to the sea. There were only two sets of scrubs so I became the
photographer of the event, or at least that’s the reason I’m going to tell
people I didn’t participate in the beheading and cleaning. We were midnight fishing folks, something I
never thought I would find myself doing.
My favorite part about going out to sea was sleeping out at
sea. We found a cove with some other overnighting boats and dropped the anchor.
After waiting for it to set we went to sleep with the plans to get up and try
some more around 5 am. However, we woke to find our anchor was not holding us
as firmly as we thought and we were drifting. After a few failed attempts to
reset the anchor we decided to just head in for the wind had picked up and was
making the water pretty rough. I was under the bow in the lower bunk and could
feel the rise and fall, or crash at times, of the boat cutting through huge
swells at sea. Where most people would become sea sick at this I found it
relaxing and was able to sleep really well. Despite only getting a few hours of
sleep, when I did wake up I was wide awake and excited. I blame it on the
energy of the seas and enjoyed my coffee braced against the wall of the cabin
looking out over the waves as Scott drove us home. What a trooper he was to
take us all the way out there and drive us through the waves home, which
must’ve been taxing.
Scott donated the 10 fish to us, which we threw in two
coolers with cold packs meant for shipping. Alaska Airlines immediately
refrigerated our catch. Back in Portland we checked into a hotel for John and I
no longer were leased anywhere. We topped off our catch with ice from the ice
machine until it was time to eat them. Ten fish. Each about 8 pounds. Holy
crap. If we hadn’t been so distracted by packing up everything from the storage
unit we may have planned the salmon bake better, but we did our best.
John and I went to the house we had been staying at before
we left to have the bake off. We knew nothing of cooking whole salmon so we
stressed, sliced, watched snippets of youtube videos, sliced… I cut John’s
finger trying to cut off a fin. Luckily reinforcements came in to help us and
we cooked us four delicious tasting salmon. We had about 15 people gorge on our
hard work. In the end we gave away 6 whole fish and left overs, including two
hand deliveries of some lucky night owls. No one that night had any idea they’d
be walking away with 6 pounds, or $60 worth of salmon. Some of my
friends emailed me pictures of their masterpieces that came of the catch which
pleased us to know nothing had gone to waste.
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| All the folks with their wrapped up Salmon to take home, there is one on the back of the bike |
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| Fish so big we must wack one another with them |
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| Salmon baby |
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| Lindsay's Salmon creation |
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| Amanda and Shawn's salmon creation |
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| Chase's Salmon creation |
The next day we got on the road with our three vehicle
caravan and headed south to California where our adventure begins. We just
happened to pass a town called Yolo which I managed to snag a picture of John
passing by the sign in his beefed up Toyota Landcruiser. I took this as a sign that I'm on the right path. You only live once.
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