June 30, 2014
We managed to be on the banks of the bay at nine thirty in
the morning. We were tired, but we had,
at long last, found the correct spot to reel in the salmon. Jason reeled in a
fish with his very first cast. He had
caught four within an hour. The day was
cloudy, foggy, and overcast. Our fellow
fishermen were dressed in rubbers and raincoats to keep dry in the mist, while our cotton soon became damp, clinging to our skin.
Catrina would have bites and snags, but wasn’t having any success getting them on the bank. Finally, she pulled
one in, and it fell off the hook as soon as she got the fish onto the rocks. She scrambled to grab the fish,
shrieking for help from Jason.
When Jason reached around to help, he slammed his hand down
on the filet knife, sticking through the sheath attached to his belt. His hand started gushing blood from the wound
in the meaty part of his palm.
Catrina grabbed the fish, ripped his gills out, and put the
fish on the stringer. Then, she surveyed
Jason's wound. She started to make the trek
to the car in hopes of finding something to bandage Jason’s hand. Jason was woozy, leaning against a concrete
barrier. The first aid kit had been left
back at camp, but Catrina limped over the slippery rocks with the hope that she
might find something in the car.
A roll of paper towels, a package of wet wipes, and a bottle
of water was all that she could locate in the backseat. She had hoped to find a roll of black
electrical tape, but had no such luck. She
looked around the parking lot and noticed a group of people. Catrina approached them, asking for some
medical tape, a bandage, or anything helpful.
A fisherman and his significant other, the one that had caught a lure in his
leg the day before, supplied us with a roll of duct tape.
Halfway out to Jason, Catrina met a fellow fishermen carrying
our fish. He told Catrina that he would
set them by our car. She thanked
him. She could look across the rocks and
see Jason sitting on the ground, and an older woman speaking to him. Jason managed to stumble to his feet before Catrina
scrambled her way to him. She washed
his hand and make-shift bandaged him with the paper towel and the duct tape. She sent him to the shore, as she gathered
their fishing equipment.
He sat on the bench, overlooking the fish weir, waiting on
Catrina to finish the trek. She loaded the
equipment into the trunk, and the fish into the cooler.
Then, Jason drove us back into Valdez.
Jason dropped Catrina off at the harbor with the cooler
filled with fish. He went back to camp
to bandage his hand, while she cleaned the fish.
She gutted them and removed the heads and fins. She scraped off the scales. A local Alaskan appeared, round and friendly,
so Catrina asked for pointers to filet the fish. He pulled out his own equipment, a mat and
his own sharp knives. Within just a few
minutes, all five gutted fish were filleted, and he was on his way. While Catrina waited on Jason to return, she
tossed fish guts to the gulls. The harbor was
quiet except for the shrill cries of the gulls as they swooped down on the
slide, as water slid the fish waste down toward the bay.
Then, it was back to the camper to begin the strenuous process
of canning the salmon. The fish from the
night before had not be fileted, and Catrina still had to slice them. The canning process should make mush out of
the flexible bone structure of the salmon anyway.
As she started slicing, Jason went to the Safeway to buy
jars. We had planned on canning the fish
in the jars of canned meat we brought with us, after we ate the meat, but we
hadn’t touched the canned meat. We were
still eating on the meat we had brought frozen in the cooler and the camper
refrigerator. We would be returning to
Texas with a lot of extra food at the rate we had been consuming the food we
had brought.
Our pressure cooker holds seven jars at a time, and it was
the only pan brought large enough to boil jars in. This was a time-consuming process, a tedious
process, not ordinarily too strenuous but having little rest, it left Catrina
exhausted. And she processed as much as
she could, as quickly as she could, as the evening low tide would occur again soon and there would be
another batch of fish to clean, to filet, to process, and to preserve. The misty rain continued outside, but we
cozily processed fish on the inside, listening to television episodes playing in the background.
Dan’s friend from the night before knocked on the door at the end
of his shift at the pelt-selling gas station.
He invited us to his home, giving directions to just a few blocks
over. After all, Valdez is just a small
town situated on the bay, and by all accounts, the residents were extremely
friendly and courteous. Later, during a break
from the canning, we drove to visit them.
We were welcomed hospitably, and met children and grandchildren. We chatted about Aurora Borealis, living among bears, and the
changes between life in the contiguous US versus Alaska. The guys took a trip to the grocery store for
milk, so we could sip on some homemade cappuccino. We appreciated the break and the good
company. We reluctantly left to return
to our canning before low tide that evening.
When low tide came, we were back on the shores of the bay,
fishing the waters below the hatchery. Casting and reeling, casting and reeling,
Jason catching his limit, while Catrina was ate by the insects. The mist had cleared, but the moisture in the
air made the bugs particularly vicious. Catrina’s arms grew weary of casting the reel,
as the midnight hour approached. Catrina’s
measly catch was supplemented by some generous fishermen beside us that weren’t
keeping their catch. Catrina was grateful
for the arrival of the bear to once again send us scurrying to the shore, grasping at our equipment and our fish, while the
bear fished for her dinner.
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