Читать книгу Never Cry Halibut. and Other Alaska Hunting and Fishing Tales онлайн

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Despite my ineptitude and the fishery’s often stressful nature, I learned to love wrestling with halibut and wallowing in their blood and slime. The Fairweather mountains beckoned white through the slate-gray world, but I only had eyes for the ocean. When I thought I saw a halibut coming up on the line, I swallowed my urge to cry out and grunted instead. I popped off wolf eels, seven-foot sleeper sharks, skates, and all sorts of strange benthic creatures from hooks. I learned to decipher species of fish as they rose from the murk with a quick glance. I gently freed octopuses, only to have them wrap their tentacles around me in what seemed like a refusal to return to the ocean.

“Stop hugging that octopus,” Joe said, laughing as I tried to convince the creature to let go. When we motored back to their home in Elfin Cove with our day’s catch, Sandy and I baited hooks and watched sea birds following schools of bait fish and whales sound. Listening to the ocean, the chug of the diesel engine chug, and Sandy telling stories from her decades of commercial fishing and exploring northern Southeast Alaska, it was a rare afternoon it didn’t feel good to be alive.