Fishing | The Life of All Sorts

One of the items on my bucket list is to learn how to catch and fillet a fish, then cook it and eat it for dinner. Being a carnivore, I feel like it would be a very relevant skill to learn to be self-sufficient this way.

At the moment it would be a bit out of my league to learn how to hunt or butcher a mammal, as I have a tendency to personify anything and everything. My strong sense of empathy is one of my greatest strengths, and can therefore also be one of my weaknesses at times. Fish are not cute and fluffy, though, so it seems like a reasonable way for me to start. My goal is to stop feeling sorry for the fish and instead think in terms of the natural events of the food chain.

As with most “outdoorsy” things, I have had little– if any– fishing experience. I seem to recall a day in my childhood, at a YMCA summer day camp, where we dangled bits of string off the dock baited with fragmented worms, something which bored and disgusted me quickly. Another summer when we were in Sweden, a family friend took us out in his rowboat and we went “fishing.” I didn’t really do much fishing myself. Someone gave me a fishing rod and I sat there holding it until a teeny tiny fish took the bait. My little sister was given the honours of feeding my teeny tiny fish to the neighbourhood cat that evening.

Based on these insufficient events, I suppose you could say that last week was the first time I went fishing. I was visiting my boyfriend in Stokmarknes where he works, about an hour and a half north of Svolvær.

After driving around in search of a good fishing spot, he patiently taught me how to use the fishing rod. I am unable to describe what I learned, as I am clueless about the terminology. It was the kind of fishing where you swing the fishing rod like a baseball bat and then reel it in. I was never good at baseball, nor was I naturally talented at the fishing rod technique. Either way, I thought fishing was a lot of fun! My boyfriend caught dozens of little fish (unfortunately too small to eat), and at one point he passed over the fishing rod so I could try reeling it in.

The thing that caught me by surprise about fishing is that it involves actual fish. Obviously I was aware that is the whole point of fishing, but I hadn’t expected the fish to be so… ALIVE. And so desperate! But you see, I have to stop myself here because when I use words like “desperate,” I start to give the fish feelings and think about how its day was ruined by getting its lip caught in a hook, and how thankful it must have been when we threw it back, and how he swam back to his fish family and when his fish-wife asked him, “How was your day, honey?” then Mr. Fish was like, “I had the worst day! You’ll never believe what happened!” And all his little fish children were so relieved their fish-daddy made it home alive.

That’s the part of my brain I need to shut off sometimes.

So as my boyfriend unhooked the fish, I blocked out these thoughts and tried to take the fish in my hand so I could throw it back. A strange sort of panic paralyzed me as I tried to touch the flopping fish. The fish held still for several seconds, and as I extended a tentative index finger to touch its scaly skin and see how it felt, it started flopping and flipping madly. Embarrassingly, this caused me to shriek and leap away, a reaction I had no control over and hope to eliminate as soon as possible.

With the next catch, I managed to put wrap my fingers around the fish while my boyfriend secured the head and tail with two hands. Then suddenly he let go and the fish began flip-flopping and I freaked out a little, feebly flinging the fish into the water. It was more like a reflex to get the flopping thing out of my hands, rather than a real throw.

At that point in time, it had taken me a solid minute to work up the courage to hold the fish, which is a pretty long time to be out of water if you have gills. Because of this prolonged out-of-water experience, the fish twitched and floated for about 30 seconds upon its return to the sea. During this time I was devastated that I had accidentally killed a fish. Somehow it would have been different if I had intentionally killed the fish and meant to eat it, to do something useful with it. But I thought for a moment that I had killed it by accident. That thought formed a lump in my throat as I stared at the lifeless, floating fish.

Luckily, the fish recovered from the shock and swam away. To say I was relieved is an understatement.

I am fully aware of how ridiculous this is. You don’t go fishing to find a pet, you go fishing to catch dinner. There is no reason to feel sorry for it. Fish eat other fish all the time. Even if I were to refrain from fishing or even buying fish in the store, another bigger fish would come along and eat that fish eventually. Considering how often I eat seafood or meat, it is ridiculous to be oblivious to the reality of how animals turn into food.

The most amusing part of all is that we didn’t even get to the real stuff, like killing or filleting a fish. I didn’t expect it to be so hard just to throw back a little fish into the ocean. Nonetheless, ridiculous or not, I’m sure I can get used to it with practice.

Despite a few melodramatic moments, I really enjoyed fishing and I hope to do so again soon. Will I be able to touch a fish without freaking out next time? We shall see. One step at a time!