May 9 -- We caught a fish!

I can't believe it we just caught a fish!!

Britt will appreciate this a lot (Britt, are you reading?!?!). We caught it at my stream, THE stream, our stream..... the pretty little stream right up the bikepath from my house. I played there for years but never saw anyone fishing there. We caught a fish right off the bikepath bridge!

Marco and I bought fishing poles on Sunday. And Sunday afternoon we had a ridiculous fiasco catching weeds and trees and rocks in the St. Croix river.

But this afternoon we thought we would try again. So we walked towards Afton, and on the way we crossed the stream. When we looked in the water there were fish, big ones! So we got out our worms, cut them up (boy, those nightcrawlers have muscles!) and threw in our poles. Right away I got some fish nibbling on the worm.

Then, ten minutes later, Marco's pole bent WAY down, I heard splashing....BIG splashing....way under the bridge. Marco looked at me like "what do I do" and started reeling it up, and I was running around thinking "What do we do now? We have to cut it's head off so it doesn't die an agonizing death of suffocation."

A huge fish appeared on the end of the line (huge for us at least). So I grabbed the end of the line with the fish, put it on the ground, put my foot on it to stop it from flopping around, and tried to cut it's head off. But our big cooking knife didn't even dent it with both of us pushing on the knife. I thought "whoa, what do I do!?!". I just knew it's cruel to let fish suffocate (it said this in the Minnesota "fishing ethics" guide after all.) So I ran over and got a big rock. It took both of us to hit it on the head until it stopped flopping around. It's head was so solid. It was brutal and I felt wierd and so did Marco and we suddenly were there with our fish in the middle of the bikepath.

But a minute passed and I realized I was amazed and proud too. I had killed my first fish. I felt like suddenly I was participating in something so old and natural and human.....catching your own meat instead of buying it in a sterile plastic package. This sounds silly, perhaps, but I said thanks to the fish and to the stream, who is like an old friend to me in a way. And I felt grateful and excited. We had our own meat. Gathered from our stream.

So we came home. It started to pour rain just after that, but by the time we were nearly home the one big gray cloud was passing and evening rays of sun were coming out just behind. My neighbors were outside so I showed them our fish and they lent us a kit to clean and filet the fish. The trees were wet and bright emerald green in the sun. We scraped the scales off the fish and cleaned it in the driveway next to the forest in a radiant golden sunset light.

Now we are in the kitchen and the fish......which by the way is a smallmouth bass - not a typical beginners' fish! And it is cooking in the oven in white wine with leeks and fennel. Mmmmmmm.This is going to be such a magnificent meal! What an exciting evening!