Goodness gracious it has been too long! Thereās so much to talk about! So much that unfortunately Iām gonna have to skip most of it because it would be impossible to play catch up.
What I do want to talk about was my trip a few weekends back going ice fishing! Iād been talking with one of the teachers at my schools about it, and he was trying to ask the other teachers and find a good time to go. So imagine my surprise and interest when I suddenly got a phone call from his phone on that Friday, on my way home from mini-volleyball! I picked up to discover that it was not the teacher in question but another teacher from that school who I work with for English classes. She told me that they were talking (and I heard the laughing and boisterous noise of a party behind her) and decided that this weekend would be a great time to go. I told her that I was busy on Sunday unfortunately so I could only go the next morning... which she hung up to talk over with the others but decided that theyād give it a shot!
However that next morning when I woke up at 5am to drive out and meet them, I found that there were only two teachers there: the woman Iād spoken with on the phone and one other from the school. Apparently the others had hangovers and werenāt able to wake up early enough. ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
So the three of us took off!
We went up to Lake Saroma, a lake right by the ocean, an hour and a half East Northeast of my town in Hokkaido.
We had to go early in the morning because in late February the days started getting fairly warm, and the longer we were out on the ice under the sun, the less good of an idea that became.
When we arrived, though, the teachers expressed some worry. We were the only ones who had arrived to fish! If the regulars hadnāt come, that might mean that either the ice was too weak, or the fish were all gone. We waffled about it for a while but eventually decided that weād best drive a little further and look for a different fishing spot. However, as we just began driving out, two cars passed us heading back to where weād come. We excitedly pulled back and asked the two ojiisan (old men) that got out about it and they said they were going out to fish! So we bundled up, grabbed our stuff, and trudged out onto the lake.
The ice was thick, and it was very easy to forget about the vast amount of water underneath us. The further we went out onto the open plain of the lake though, the more the wind bit. It wasnāt an unusually cold day, but the wind was far stronger than normal and on the flat expanse of the ice the only thing that broke its speed was our jackets.
We hunkered down in a spot that looked like it had been fished a bit previously, while the ojiisan went a bit further out. We used a hand drill as you can see in the pictures to drill out holes in the ice for each of us, and pulled out the fishing rods. What baffled me was that I asked about bait but they said that you didnāt need any! The fishing line was also lined with many hooks spaced out evenly along the length, rather than just a single hook on the very end.
Well, we lowered our lines into the holes and squatted down. Apparently if youāre a pro, or a serious enthusiast, youāll get a little tent-like structure to sit in which can help with the cold and the wind, but we had none so we set our backs to the wind and waited... and waited.
No fish were biting! We wondered if it truly was a bad day for it, but one of the teachers went over to the two old men and it turned out they were catching a good amount of fish 50 yards away!
They invited us over so we packed up our stuff, walked over to they were, and re-set our camp. Within a few minutes, we were getting bites too!
The poor fish down there must be so dumb and frozen and hungry that they bite at the hooks even without any bait on them. It doesnāt quite feel like youāre actually.... doing anything. The skill extends to knowing where to dig the hole, apparently, but not as much to the actual fishing part. You lower the line deep into the ice, jiggle the line every so often (or actually just wait), and the fish will eventually latch on.
We stayed around 2 hours before we were feeling the wind quite a lot, and decided that weād better go back. At that point between the three of us we had about 25 little fish (the first we caught are called āchikaā in Japanese, and there really isnāt an english name for them besides a scientific name). But one of the teachers said he didnāt need his, so we split the total in half.
I got home and wondered... how am I going to cook these fish? I donāt really know how to cook fish, or at least donāt have much confidence in it, since I really never have cooked fish on my own. But the teachers were talking about frying them or tempura, so I figured Iād go with that. When I got home I immediately googled in Japanese to try to find picutres or recipes... and what I found was a little horrifying:
Apparently people just fry/tempura and eat thee guys whole! Maybe taking out the internal organs first but still. Dang. I dunno I was still feeling a little odd about the whole fishing thing. Donāt get me wrong I found it fun and would gladly do it again, but it was also the first time Iāve gone out with the express goal of killing a bunch of things, and succeeded at it. (Besides the fly genocide that has to happen every fall in my house)
I was dismayed: I didnāt feel keen on eating the face of something Iād just recently killed myself. But I looked a little further and found a guide on how to debone the Chika, and more importantly remove the head and organs.
Iāll leave out the messy details but I eventually figured it out and got all of the fish opened up and cleaned. Then, using some Tempura flour Iād bought at the convenience store, I whipped up some batter, dipped the fish in, and fried them up in some oil! Then, when they were done, I pulled them out and dipped them in some sauce... And oh my goodness they were delicious. Boy, Iām salivating just remembering it. Having the fish fresh really does make a world of difference.
I see now why people bother with this whole fishing business. Iām looking forward to the next chance I get to go out ice fishing... or normal fishing... again!
