LaPaz Home Learning

At fishing, that is! One of us has finally figured out how to land the elusive red (sockeye) salmon! It took a few days, but Cityboy has now earned the bragging rights of having landed our first salmon of the season! In fact, he landed two!

This beauty was a big male, about 25 pounds, and put up a great fight!

But in the end…

He and a slightly smaller female ended up on the cleaning table and will soon be on our dinner table! (who needs a dissection kit when you have salmon and a filet knife! What a lesson in anatomy!)

Wow! These two fish netted us 17 solid inch-thick salmon steaks , plus 4 half-pound fillets!

Crank up the grill, we are eating good tonight!

A little salmon lore: according to what we’ve learned from the locals, red salmon do not feed when heading upstream to spawn. They do, however, swim with their mouths wide open. The angler’s task then, is to land a weighted fly just upstream from the swimming fish, hope the current carries the fly into the fish’s gaping jaws, making the fish instinctively bite, then snag the fish in the jaw as the line passes through. No easy task, let me assure you! And very different than the trout fishing I am accustomed to! And if you happen to snag the fish anywhere but the mouth, you must by law throw the big guy back. OUCH! I’ve seen some lovely fish set free due to an unlucky ill-placed hook.