First Time Fisherwoman in Alaska

“Really pull. Like with your hips,” my guide instructs.

I try it, reminiscent of a horizontal golf swing, yanking the rod, attached to a line, attached to a hook.

“That’s it!”

When I turned seven, I asked for a fishing rod for my birthday. I wanted to fish, badly, though I could not explain why. Maybe I’d read about it. Maybe I dreamed of floating in a boat with a fizzy drink and a book while the line meandered downstream. Instead, I got a mini set of golf clubs. More realistic for an outing with my father— a driving range over a Colorado river.

I let the dream die.

The first time I reeled in a fish, I was on a tour boat with my sister in New Zealand. I held the squirming fish in my hands for a photo, cringing the whole time, but it was deemed too small and we tossed it back to the lake. Fishing from a boat felt like cheating, not like the sport I’d imagined.

But today feels different. I’m in waders and the water is up to my waist. I’m catching the line with a finger, flipping the barrel, casting with an overhead flick. I’m reeling the line in, then throwing it out, over and over and over again.

Usually I’m a yapper. I’d be chatting with the guide, asking him all sorts of questions, but I woke up two hours too early, with the realization that :

I’m sick
I won’t be able to go back to sleep, so might as well go fishing anyway.

The sore throat makes me reticent, so I’m surprised when the bearded guide fills in the silence. He’s got the beard and gruffness of an outdoorsman, long waves of hair pulled back under a hat. I think at first that he is from here, an Alaskan Park Ranger taking an assignment during salmon fishing season, but only half is true. He’s not Alaskan, but he’s worked for the National Park Service for years, “and I’m living my second life,” he says.

I listen, and nod, and try not to cough the kind of cough that sends one into a fit of coughing that doesn’t stop. I cast. Reel in. Cast again. Sometimes hand it to him when it seems caught or tangled, the way I used to hand my knitting to my mother to fix.

“I used to be interested in that Man Versus Wild thing,” he says, “but as you get older, you really start to understand the impact of community.”

“Yes!” I croak, “I used to love My Side of the Mountain. I wanted to live in a tree and tame a falcon.”

He exclaims and shakes his head, “Haven’t heard that book title in a while.”

He tells me that if he hooks a fish, we’ll trade rods and he’ll let me reel it in. He says I can keep casting while he deals with the bloody part.

I tell him I’d rather participate in the whole process. I’ve never killed anything to eat myself. The closest I ever got was averting my eyes when our hosts in Nepal killed a goat for dinner. Listened to the squawk of chickens, the thunk of an axe. Always thought I’d like to understand what eating meat really entails. If I cannot stomach it, then maybe I should not put it in my stomach.

“That’s rad,” he says. He’s been considering only eating what he kills for himself. But it does not seem like we are going to catch anything today. There are definitely fish around. There are at least fifty other fisherfolk out, casting and dragging their lines. They tie their catch to them like limp dogs on a lead, dragging in the sand.

I yell when something breaches in the water two meters in front of me. A sea lion huffs and crashes back under water.

“Do they ever attack?” I ask, staggering a few steps backwards. I’d recently been on a sight-seeing boat that did confirm that sea lion males get territorial.

“One bit my friend on the leg once,” he says, not-so-reassuringly. “But it makes a great story!”

I let him stay waist deep while I go back to wading. I count at least fifteen sea lions fishing with us. One leaps, clamping his jaws on a bloody salmon.

“Nice job buddy!” I cheer, even though my throat is killing me. I wonder if buddy is too diminutive for these creatures, our kin. Reminds me of the woman I went kayaking with the other day, who said to me, “Lead the way, sister!” Maybe I should have said, nice catch, brother. Brother sea lion. Please do not bite me.

The sea lions are so close I fear my hook might snag them, so I cast elsewhere, even though they are where the fish are. What is sport for me is livelihood for them. We move up shore, water skimming over our waterproof boots.

A man splashes towards us, kicking up water and gesticulating wildly. He waves his pole in the air, tackle on his vest swinging.

“It’s behind you!” he yells, eyes wide. “Behind you! Behind you!”

I turn, expecting to see a bear on hind legs or Papa sea lion charging us off his turf. But there’s nothing.

I look down, and spot the flash of scales, pink and silver. A fish darts upstream between me and my guide.

“You missed it!” The running man says, accusatorially. I can’t help but laugh. What a journey for that fish, to slip past the huge net cast by the commercial fishing boat, skirt around hunting seals, bolt by the distracted woman-who-has-never-really-fished-before, and now he’s got to get past the fifty hooks dragging in the shallows. Then the eagles. And bears. I hope he makes it.

I ask the guide what he meant before, about his second life. He shares an incredible story, how in a Medical Diagnostic class, he arrived early. His mentor needed an example of a chest scan, so he volunteered. The mentor just-so-happened to know a lot about what showed up on the screen: a cancerous tumor. Nothing like fate lining up a life-or-death situation to make you rethink everything. “What’s your crucible moment?” he asks, and I stumble over my words, wondering how much of my own soft underbelly to share.

We’re two hours in when the guide calls my name.

“Got one! Take it, take it,” he says, passing me the rod. Tip up. Reel in as much as I can.

“Run backwards!” He puts a hand behind my shoulder as I backpedal, fish flopping on the sand. “You’re good, faster!”

When we get it up onto the shore, he turns towards me and pulls a club from his belt.

“I’ll let you do the honors,” he says. Oh no. I asked for this, but part of me fears that the reality of it might make me faint. I’ve had that problem before, in hospital rooms, scrubbed in, watching a surgeon slice open a woman on the operating table. Excusing myself to squat and drop my head between my knees, taking deep breaths.

He grips the wiggling fish, tells me to aim between the eyes. I should have let him show me first, I don’t want to get it wrong. I kneel. Try, twice, swinging with all my heft, but neither are killing blows. I pass the club to the guide and he thwacks the fish hard. The fish quivers then stills, and the guide walks me through what to do next. Pull out the hook. Scoop my fingers behind the gills, yank, let the blood out. It’s all over my hands, but the wave of nausea never hits. We string blue twine through the gills and stake the line to the shore. I dip my hands in the cold water, fish blood up to the wrists of my puffy jacket. It won’t come off. I twist my hands over the other like Lady Macbeth.

“Don’t miss the mountains for the fish,” my guide reminds me. We’re surrounded on all sides by snowy peaks. The sun shimmers off the water. Another hour goes by, the tides have shifted, it’s time to go home. The guide apologizes that we only got one fish, but I’m pleased with it. Any more and I’d feel greedy. We wash it and he shows me angles and cuts to make, bright red flesh exposed to air. Thank you, brother salmon… or sister salmon. I add, silently.

In a world where food is neatly packaged and death outsourced, I’m strangely grateful for the blood, the guts, and the opportunity to do it myself. The sockeye makes six meals, sizzling in a pan and crisping in an oven. I cook it multiple ways, and try to reflect the reverence of it in every bite. And mull over what to do with my second life.