Matt's+Memoir

My dad, brother, and I were all walking down the long, metal pier. There was, or what looked like, nothing between me and the cold Alaskan water except two inches of metal mesh. While in Alaska it had felt right being isolated, and everything was spread out. Then our fishing crew of three stepped onto the fishing boat.

My dad, brother, and I were all getting on the fishing boat that was going to take us out to sea. We met up with our captain and set out. The captain of the boat was nice, but seemed to get a little bit crankier along the way. I personally thought of him as boring, because he hardly ever laughed or made jokes. Beside from that he was fine. We soon reached the area that we were going to go halibut fishing.

Then it happened. At first a huge mass erupted from the cold water, but then it started to come out, as if it was slowly escaping the grasp of the water. My eyes widened, and my jaw dropped. The huge thing coming out of the water was a whale. It soon was completely out of the water, in all its glory. Its blue wavy hide and its huge tail froze in midair for a split-second, and plummeted to the sea. There was no sound until a few seconds later. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Then behind where the whale had jumped out of the water, five whaled slapped their tails on the surface of the water. This continued around the boat, causing it to rock slowly. I had nothing to say. I felt as if my thoughts and words had been flushed out of my head.

The deafening sound of my dad saying, “You got a bite,” ruined the moment. I had been told how to reel in a fish earlier. It was supposed to be painful. I had recently seen my brother reel in a 30 inch fish, and saw the pain in his eyes. I then grabbed the rod and lodged it in my abdomen. In my head I reminded myself; pull up, down and reel, pull up, down and reel, pull up, down and reel. It felt as if I was reeling a whale out of the water.

After about a minute of tugging I hauled a 31.5 inch halibut over the side of the boat. The breathless fish flopped and turned trying to make it so it would be free from the chain that it had gotten itself attached to, out of hunger. The captain needed to kill the fish before it slapped somebody in the leg, so he pulled a knife from the cabin with an 18 inch blade. My dads comment was, “Small knife.” At first I thought that our captain was going to make sushi with the knives curved blade, which made it look like a samurai sword, but all he did, was stab the fish directly in the gills, yanked the knife out of the victim, and put the knife away.

We had caught our limit of halibut, and decided to go salmon fishing. I had seen salmon before in the rivers while they were going to spawn when we went bear watching, but these fish weren’t all pinks. There were three kinds of salmon in the area. Pinks were worthless, and were used for bait. Silvers were good, and dominated our haul of fish. Kings were a lot larger, and were harder to catch. The salmon were at a limit of 6 per person on board. We had caught about four salmon, and it got very slow. We hadn’t gotten a bite in a long time. I went and had lunch in the cabin of the boat.

“I want to go back it’s getting boring,” I said. I was thinking of my mom and little brother having fun riding with the huskies. We ended up catching thirteen salmon. That makes nine slow catches during which I was complaining, and seven that were a lot of fun to reel in. Then the sea-sickness kicked in. We had been on the boat for about four hours, and it was a small boat. The size of the boat made it rock a lot, and it got really repetitive. It really didn’t help looking down at the waves, sway, splash, sway, splash. I was starting to get dizzy and everything looked as if it was moving. All I wanted was to get off of the boat… soon.

We finally went back to shore and took pictures with the captain and the fish. We had caught on pink which we gave to the captain for bait, thirteen silvers, and three halibut. I was fun though, and I was grateful for the captain’s help. I had caught the biggest halibut, which gave me bragging rights against my dad and brother for the rest of the day. We had a lot of fish to bring home. And we ended up buying another freezer to fit it all. We were set for a long while. Even now there is still fish in the freezer, and all of it tasted great. All of the fun, though, was reached through sacrifices. I felt like I was still on the swaying boat for the next few days. It also carried over to the plane ride home, which wasn’t fun, and I was bruised from where the rod was placed to reel in the halibut.