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Gone Fishing

Friday, May 3, 2002

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From Seward, Alaska
Aboard the Glacier Bear
• Seward, Alaska is a resort town about 120 miles by car south of Anchorage. I am here for a speech tomorrow night to the Alaska Credit Union League. I have been out of touch with the world for about 24 hours. There is no deep hidden meaning to this column. It is about fishing.

• As I write this I am watching a fishing competition among some 38 people aboard five boats. I am not fishing but I AM on one of the boats. Everyone is fishing for King Salmon. The person who catches the biggest fish wins. It is about 45 degrees and windy. It snowed yesterday. As far as I am concerned these conditions amount to another "Perfect Storm." Are you getting my - you should pardon the expression - drift?

• Here's the thing about fishing from a boat like the Glacier Bear, which is a very comfortable, 50 footer: Six lines are dropped off the stern. The driver of the boat trolls slowly. Everyone else drinks bloody marys, or beer, or soda and eats muffins, or bagels, or sandwiches and chats and lounges around until someone yells: "Fish On!"

• Then everyone rushes to the back of the boat and chatters excitedly while the fish is reeled in, brought aboard via a net, and then whacked in the head with a wooden mallet. The person who is deemed to have caught the fish holds the fish up by one gill while pictures are snapped, congratulations are proffered, and the fish is thrown ignominiously into a cooler to join its brethren pending the official weigh-in.

• Afterwards everyone returns to their previous position and awaits the next "Fish On!" call.

• The person did not, of course, catch the fish. The fish itself did all of that work. But who would pay good money to reel a fish? "Catching a fish," it turns out, is nothing more than a marketing concept.

• Fishing (or reeling), it appears to me, has a great deal in common with Soccer where everyone in the stands sits around drinking, chatting, and checking out the women until someone scores. "Fish On!," I have determined, is Alaskan for "GOALLLLLLLL!!!!"

• The contest runs from 8 AM until 4 PM. Anything in the boat by Four counts. By 3:50 our boat has caught a total of five fish which, according to the locals, appear to be in the 5 - 7 pound range. That comes out to an average of .625 fish per hour. Just like Soccer.

• Sure enough, with 10 minutes to go three fish - each of which , to my highly trained eye, is about the size of Moby Dick with a thyroid condition - attach themselves to the hooks and are muscled aboard.

• It turned out that the largest of the three weighed in at 23.2 pounds which is a pretty big fish.

• Seward, Alaska is at the north end of a body of water called, Resurrection Bay. In my motel room there was a flier entitled: "Tsunami! Safety Tips for the Gulf of Alaska." Oh, swell. Now I need to worry about a tidal wave.

• One of the safety tips is to "take your 7-day disaster supply kit." In addition to other items, my 7-day disaster supply kit requires "one gallon of water per person per day."

• I did not think to bring my seven-gallon portable water container with me from Alexandria, Virginia, so I will have to fill about 160 little plastic motel drinking cups, of which I have three on the sink of my room. I do not know how I will transport these cups in the case of a Tsunami which may be why so many people suffer ill effects from them.

• But here's another, more existential, issue: If you are at the edge of Resurrection Bay and a Tsunami washes over you ... What's the problem?

• On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: Pictures from the fishing trip and the usual stuff.
  --END --
  Copyright © 2002 Richard A. Galen

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