Day 24 - Salmon

 July 24 day 24

My first job after college was as a metallurgical engineer and supervisor at Vollrath Foundry in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The job required a fair amount of flying, often to customers who had a complaint about a casting we sent. I had a lot of anxiety about flying, not only because I'd have a target on my back as I walked in the door of an upset customer, but also because I had some real fear of flying. Being aware of metal fatigue, stress corrosion, and catastrophic failure played on my mind every time we climbed above the clouds. Knowing I'd be flying a lot, I decided to face the fear head on. I got a pilot's license. Ground school was interesting and led up to the first flight with an instructor. I was terrified, especially when he intentionally put it into a stall to demonstrate recovery techniques. Slowly but surely, I learned how to fly. I flew single engine Cessnas and Tomahawks out of Sheboygan Falls for two years. Knowing how everything worked cured my fear of flying. 

I tried to attack my fear of fish head on for 55 years, to no avail. I went to the Boundary Waters at the border of Minnesota and Canada several times with my son and Peach's brother, Dave. Peach even came once. I caught many fish, but just couldn't get over the hump and grab them. In the plane's cockpit, I had to act correctly or die. In the canoe, my boatmates could let me off the hook, literally. In spite of the generous patience of Dave and the others, my fears continued to own me. That has all changed in the past month. I mentioned the little steps I made with Dave and Arlo, and with the deep sea charter trip in the last blog. Well, yesterday, the Harding gang, and Bill, Brad and I, went fly fishing for salmon right across the Kenai River from the lodge. You cast and recast over and over again until you're lucky enough to have one reflexively grab the fly in their mouth. The fish aren't feeding, they're heading up the river to where they were born, to spawn and then die. We are close enough to the ocean here that the salmon haven't yet laid their eggs and are still full of life, and full of fight. When caught, you battle them until you can pull them to shore without a net. If you don't do it correctly, they come off the hook and escape. When they are successfully pulled ashore, they flop and flip and flop again all over the frickin place. The guppies doing that when I was ten had nothing on these bastards! The halibut and cod and yellow eye on the charter boat flopped too, but it was mostly tail whopping. I could deal with that. These salmon were way beyond that, and here, there was no deck hand to take them off the hook. I watched Brad show my brother what to do. You whack them over the head with a club to knock them out. Then you stick your finger in their gills up to their mouth (being careful to stay away from their teeth.) Then you carry them to the river, wash off the mud and rip their gills open with a pliers to bleed them out to enhance the meat. Then you rinse the fish off in the river and carry them to the pile of fish on the shore that the more experienced among us had already landed. I'm watching this, the flopping, the wracking, the fingers in the gills, the ripping, the rinsing, and I'm thinking to myself, "not a chance in hell!" So for the next half hour I fiddled with my fishing pole, barely threw the line out, pretended like I was trying. I was fishing for salmon, but I'd be damned if I wanted to catch one!  Everyone around me was catching salmon. Even my brother, a rookie like me, had three. I had none, and I was perfectly content with that. Then I caught one. In my haste to get out of the water, safely away from the battling fish, I pulled too fast and lost it off the hook. It happened a second time the same way ten minutes later. By now, Brad and others were trying to gelp me out of mercy because I was the only one there without a dang salmon. I couldn't be the only one, and I couldn't let my brother beat me without a fight. Finally I caught one, let it fight a bit, kept my pole tip down and successfully pulled it to the river bank. I grabbed the club and forced myself to whack it in the head. I hit it, then I missed it, then I hit it again. I think I whacked it four times. Once is supposed to be enough, but if I was expected to touch that thing, put my fingers in its gills and carry it to the river for gill ripping and rinsing, I was going to be damn sure it was dead. No flopping for this guy! I did it, clumsily, but I did it. Then I did it again. By the third time, I didn't need Brad's help. It wasn't routine, but it was no longer terrifying. More importantly I had tied Bill, three fish to three, much to his dismay. I ended up getting my daily limit of six salmon, and could then relax on shore, with the same type of satisfaction I felt 35 years ago when I took my first solo flight in the plane. I stood near my brother (remember, he was with me 55 years ago when I developed my fear of fish) and I tried to tell him, like I was suddenly a pro, how to land more salmon. After all, I had caught my limit of six, and he only had four. I don't remind him of that very much; only about once every fifteen minutes!    

My first salmon

Our day's catch with Me, Bill, Katy and Brad

View of our fishing spot from the deck of the beautiful Harding Lodge.