Our water adventures continued on Wednesday when we finally got in some real Alaskan fishing! The Sunderlands (senior missionary couple who took us gold panning) let us borrow some fishing poles and we went to the beach next to the hatchery to go snagging. Snagging is a type of fishing where you use a weighted, three pronged fishing hook and instead of waiting for the fish to bite the bait you just cast and then jerk it as you reel in. As you are reeling in you snag the fish (it can be in the mouth, on a fin, in the side - just anywhere) and just hope that you are strong enough to get these large, fighting salmon to shore. We caught SO MANY FISH! For those of you that don't know, there are five different types of salmon. Our sweet primary boys had warned us that you absolutely do not keep the chum salmon if you catch them. These salmon are referred to as dog salmon - as in you can feed them to your dog. Our hometeachers actually confirmed the advice our nine year old boys gave, and told us that the dog salmon don't cook well and are too mushy. With this in mind we quickly became snob Alaskan fishermen and only wanted to catch the good salmon. Unfortunately for us we caught about three dog salmon to every one good salmon! But all was not lost and we still brought home five good salmon, and a broken fishing pole (these fish are big!).
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| First cast, first catch. Chum salmon. |
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| Wednesday's catch |
Once we were home Christopher filleted the salmon as I hid in the other room because I couldn't handle the smell or the dead eyeballs staring at me. Once he had the fish looking like something you could buy at the grocery store I rejoined him (with a good smelling candle and open windows) and we cooked a great dinner. We even bought some Martinelli's sparkling cider to celebrate our catch and make our at-home date night all the more romantic.
As we talked about the day it didn't take long to realize Chris had caught fishing fever. He had a blast and can't wait to go again - next time on a boat and fishing for even larger fish. On the other hand, I realized my favorite part of fishing was watching the sea lions. My least favorite part was when I caught a fish and it was really hard to reel it in, and then when it got to the shore it looked hurt because I was mean and got a nasty hook stuck in it, and even worse if it was a good salmon Chris would barbarically hit a rock over it's head and kill it, and later he would gut it and pulled out all its' insides!!! One fish had gotten hooked in the side and as it struggled to get off the hook it tore open its side until all its' eggs were flying around! Needless to say, I think I'm a little too sensitive to be good at fishing, and Barbie Dani came out this trip. I'll just stick with the hikes. We did enjoy looking through the pictures from the day though, and hope you enjoy this collage we put together entitled "How Dani REALLY Feels About Fishing."
Thursday morning Chris went back out fishing again (he bought his "day-license" strategically and made the most of the 24 hour time limit), and I opted to stay home because, well because I broke my fishing pole on Wednesday.... Anyways, Chris went at an opportune time and caught eight more salmon that he ended up taking to a warehouse to get smoked. He also brought home a bunch of salmon eggs because the night before we had the crazy idea to try caviar. We looked up online how to prepare caviar (soaking the eggs in a salt water brine), and tasted this delicacy. These pretty orange pearls popped open and gushed strong flavors in your mouth.... ok, ok, ok the truth is we don't care how expensive caviar can be - this stuff is disgusting! We will not be eating fish eggs again any time soon. Ewwwww.
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| Thursday's catch |
On Friday we went to the stake youth conference. Our boss Mel Perkins was released as the Anchorage Temple president not long ago and had been asked to speak on temples to the youth. He asked us to join him because his wife was out of town, and because he thought the youth would relate more to us as we had gotten our own endowments and had been sealed in the temple more recently. It was an amazing experience. We loved watching his presentation, and also having the opportunity to bear our own testimonies of the temple to three different groups of teenagers. We know the temple is the House of God. We know the Spirit that you feel in there is real. And we are so grateful for the work that we can do there, and for the opportunity that it gives families to be together forever. Part of the presentation was watching pioneer John Roye Moyle's story about sacrifice and dedication to build the House of the Lord.
Let us all strive to be those people who act, and not those who are acted upon.
Remember to pray and remember to play,
Mr. & Mrs. Andrew
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