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Gone Fishin'
Nov 16 -
My dad's a fisherman. You would think I would have picked up some pointers from him. But
it's been years since I've been fishing on Lake Superior and I always had my Dad to do my dirty work. He would bait my
hook, reel in the fish if it was too much for me and do the nasty deed of fileting the fish at the end of the day.
For his part, Kev has only caught about three fish in his life.
It was with this lack of actual fishing experience that we found ourselves in Florida, armed with a Florida Fishing License (only one, which gets us into trouble later), a borrowed rod and
a bag of frozen shrimp. Ready to take on a shark.
Fishie, Fishie, bite my hook.
You be the dinner, I'll be the cook!
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We caught our first fish within minutes of dropping our lines into the channel. Wow!! This fishing stuff is e-zee! Bam! Kev gets one about two minutes after I've got mine. The camera is flashing like crazy as we pose for shot after shot with our fish.
They certainly look big enough to eat. We measure them against our bucket and roughly figure that if they're the width of the bucket, they're big enough for us to keep. Man, we're good at this. We've got it all under control, our line is back in the water and we're just waiting for a third.
It is right about now that we come to the slow realization that we have a couple of live fish that we must do something with.
"I dunno, how do you normally kill a fish?" says I, thinking that somehow kev's X chromosome gives him an instinctual insight into how to kill creatures.
"Aren't you supposed to hit it on the head or something? " says Kev with very little confidence.
"Maybe I should just chop off it's head. Where's the knife?" I'm not looking forward to this. I don't remember my Dad ever cutting the head off a fish. Maybe I should consider the banging angle.
"Should I bang or chop?" It's as though I'm looking for a confirmation from Kev to bless my killing method. Why am I the one doing this? Because I caught the damn thing, that's why. Things are starting to become a little frantic. The fish isn't looking so well. It may very well die on it's own before we've got a chance to kill it.
"Ok. I'm going to chop the head off." I pull out the tacklebox knife and prepare to kill the squirming fish.
I begin to chop the head...
If you're squemish, you may not want to continue.
Instead, you can enjoy our trip to
Disney World.
...but because my knife was so dull and I was not used to the force required to cut through flesh, I am very sorry to say
that I only made it through about 1/3 of the fish when I had to take a breather. This was incredibly tramautic. I've got
a squirming fish with a head half-attached making all kinds of noises. I'm holding a bloody knife and considering just
tossing the whole lot back into the Atlantic and making a run for it.
But I'm stronger than that. Come on woman, you were at Ground Zero. You can handle a fish. With a hearty whack (actually, it was more like a saw, saw, saw) I got the rest of that fish head off. And then I got truly freaked out.
The fish head... kept...on...moving. Separately.
Okay. I know I didn't sign up for decapitated fish-head nightmares. From now on, my fish are dying a slow, yet untramautic death on ice in the bucket.
It would be wise not to ask how we did fileting the fish.
I'm sure PETA is going to come after me for telling this story. I apologize to all fish out there for the horrible
death experienced by your Jack Fish comrade.
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 Today's Weather:
Sailor's Delight
| Sleeping Quarters |
Bahia Honda
 
Still here, still fishing. There's something called Keys Disease down here. The main symptoms are that all you want to do is drink beer and fish. We're halfway there.
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Bkfast:
 | Campground
Bahia Honda |
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| K's Order: | Special K Berries |
| A's Order: | Hash Browns |
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Lunch:
| Campground
Bahia Honda |
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| Shared: | Fried Jack
Creole Rice |
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