Keith's dad loves fishing. He tries to go about every other weekend during fishing season up here. He takes his big boat and drives down to Whittier to take her out on the Prince William Sound and fish. And this weekend, we went with him.
Friday afternoon right when we got off of work, Keith and I headed out to meet up with the boat. We drove about an hour south out of Anchorage along the coast line until we got to the tunnel. We had to wait there for about 15 minutes and then we drove through to Whittier.
In Whittier we met up with the boat (that's about all that there is to do in Whittier) and got going. Friday night we threw out shrimp pots, and found a good place to camp for the night. And also convinced a stubborn 3 year old that the toilet on the boat was not scary. And then we crammed in to the boat to sleep.
After sleeping, we got to fishing, and I got seasick. Luckily all the sick went into the ocean, but that set the tone of the day for my stomach. Then we fished. I caught my first ever fish pretty early in the morning, but it was a useless tom cod. He was big, though, and I was proud that I caught him! After that I mostly let other people fish, cause I still felt icky.
We fished and ate and fished for a few more hours, and never got anything worth keeping except one red snapper- did you know that fishes have tongues? I didn't, but this snapper sure had a tongue on him. I kind of helped clean him, too. But mostly I just held the ziploc bag open to put the fillets in after Chuck cut them off. That part of the trip was nice... we found a very still cove to put the boat in for a bit.
Also, we saw really cool porpoises. They swam with our boat for a few minutes. They were so pretty! And fast. And then they swam away from us.
The last thing we had to do was get our shrimp pots. So we drove back and found the buoys and pulled up the pots. Pot 1: some shrimp. Pot 2: lots of shrimp. Pot 3: lots of shrimp. Pot 4: a small octopus, and 3 shrimp. Keith accidentally dropped that one back into the ocean. So now we're down to 4 pots. Pot that just got promoted to 4: some shrimp. Want to know the secret to catching shrimps? Cat food. Apparently they love it. They are little scavenging bottom feeders, after all. Then I held more ziploc bags open so we could throw shrimp into them after their heads were ripped off. I'm not much one for ripping the heads off of things, especially not while they're still alive. Did you know, by the way, that shrimp swim backwards? I learned that as the head ripping was happening.
Anyway, after we finished fishing, we took the boat back into Whittier, grabbed dinner at the best little fish fry place, and drove back through the tunnel and home.
Ready for my take on fishing? Here it is:
Pros:
- You get to eat yummy things after if you catch them
- You get to go to pretty places in Alaska, on a boat
- Sometimes you see porpoises and other such wildlife
- You can say you've caught a fish
Cons:- Seasickness
- You probably have to touch dead and dying fish
- Sometimes you won't really catch anything
- Seasickness
I think I will not become a fisherwoman. Maybe I'll fish every year or two, but I'm not going to be creating a new hobby all of a sudden. But tonight we're going to eat our shrimps, so that'll be delicious!
