one fish, two fish

this past sunday, i had the kind of perfect day i daydream about when i'm staring out at rain on a saturday every other afternoon from my couch. p, his dad, and i took the boat out on north pass for halibut fishing. i mean seriously, look at this picture. it's got sea lions, a glacier, and a bald eagle for chrissakes. it's such an alaskan picture, it's almost kitsch. in fact, the humpback whale was too embarrassed to surface and picked a more original time to breach.

so as i'd never gone halibut fishing before, or fishing in the ocean at all, p was trying to teach me how to let my line out and feel the weights hit. i didn't seem to get the hang of it, he finally just sorta gave up and let me have at it, and i was imagining my poor herring either floating hopelessly 50 feet above the bottom or on the ground with 50 feet of line snagged up around it. cod and crabs were going crazy for p's and his dad's bait, and i joked that nobody liked mine. then, right on comedic timing cue, my rod jerked. the fish and i struggled for what seemed like ages (let me tell you, it was the hardest arm workout i've ever had... my guns are still sore), until finally, we saw that i'd caught a 45-50 lb. halibut from 350 feet!

p and his dad just kept snagging cod, which they kept releasing, and at the end, i hooked this scary looking sole. i am curious about food & wanted to eat everything i caught. we went to lincoln island to fillet the fish, and i learned how to cut up my first fish. so many firsts. a bald eagle couldn't wait for us to leave and besides, we were starving, so we called it a day after 4 hours and went home to do some beer battering.

halibut was definitely the best meat, and that's my final answer reg. the other two weren't so bad; in fact, cod was all i ever knew fish & chips being made of when i was growing up down south. the sole was kind of mushy but still alright, although next time i'll leave it in the ocean rather than try to get it on my plate.