my life

The fish as I pulled him out of the water; hook through eye

Today I went fishing and found out today that I am not a natural born killer. I’ve always justified my meat eating habits by kidding myself that anything I was eating I could have killed myself. That beef steak from some cow killing; easy. The lamb chop, all chopped up; simple.

I came to be fishing as I’m actually in paradise at the moment. I’ll write more about it later, but paradise lets you get into a little row boat with a rod or two and head off into the middle of a lake.

At first, this fishing malarky was amazing. The view, the serenity, the book I’m reading. It was at least 2 hours of lazing, and a couple of false alarms before I realised I had a bite! This fish, who was just trying to have his lunch, was going to end up as mine.

Finally dead fish; the brutal reality of what we eat every day

Remembering what my friend Wayne had told me about how to land a fish was proving difficult as the moment struck. The fish came out of the water, wriggling and having trouble breathing, with a hook (that I had put there) right through its eye. God, I felt awful.

Should I let it go back in the water where it obviously felt more at home? Not with a hook in its eye; it had to die. And I had to be the one to kill it. I’ve never knowingly killed anything other than flies and wasps in the past and the reality of what I had to do kicked in.

Now, If you’re a seasoned fisherman or a hunter you must be thinking I am a bit of a pansy right now; you’d be right. I dragged it into the boat, picked up the knife and stuck it into its head, thinking that I would surely kill it instantly. It continued to wriggle about so I stuck the knife through it’s head again. Still moving. I tried to cut its head off but the knife wasn’t sharp enough so it ended up just pushing down on its neck until its eyes popped out.

It was at this point I will never forget the look on its face, as if to say “Why are you doing this to me?” – I kept saying sorry, sorry, sorry as I stabbed it repeatedly in the head, trying desperately to put it out of its misery. I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing, this was proving to be a traumatic experience.

He was very tasty

After about 10 minutes (could have been longer, could have been shorter, I don’t know) it was fully dead. Not moving at all. What a relief. I spent the next 15 minutes or so just staring into the distance, contemplating what I had just done to another creature; a creature who had done nothing to harm me at all. It was quite a humbling experience, and until now I never knew that I was such a wuss.

I rowed back, and the nice lady who owned paradise filleted my friend. She then rolled him in flour and black pepper. Fried him, squeezed some lemon on him and I ate him. He tasted nice!