Fishing Out Front

Here on Kodiak, it's Silver Salmon season. Every year Zoya and I like to catch and freeze around 6 silvers for winter consumption. That's around 18, omega 3-filled meals and, eating salmon once a week with a few misses for Thanksgiving etc (who wants fish for Thanksgiving?), those 6 fish generally last until March. And by March silvers have generally lost their appeal and are beginning to taste like the freezer. So through trial and error Zoya and I have come down to freezing around 6 fish per year. This is tough because silvers are so much fun to catch! It would be easy and a lot of fun to freeze 20 - but also wasteful and irresponsible. However, everybody loves to catch fish and this time of year it is hard to pass through downtown without someone offering you a fish.

So the fish are returning to their home rivers, and it is time to stock up. Last night Mike Pfeffer and I took one of my inflatable canoes out into Mill Bay (photo is a view of Mill Bay from our porch), and managed to catch 1 halibutt, 2 silver salmon and numerous small cod (I kept one for dinner tonight). Mike caught his halibutt about 20 feet from the beach on the first cast, and he hooked (and lost) a silver on his second cast. I love fishing out in front of the house. While waiting for Mike to arrive I looked out the window and checked for 'jumpers'. And Zoya gets to watch us fish - if she needed us to come home early she could have gone outside on the lawn and hollered. How many people in America are lucky enough to get to fish right outside their living room window? Patrick