Fulla Pike

From a couple springs ago.

Finally caught a pike in Lake Echo, brought it home, and ate it. Wrote this to celebrate.

Okay, tonight I went fishing once more in my kayak for the prick ass northern pike that has eluded my trolling line for the past eight fishing hours. Damn you and your picky tastes thou cruellest pike of the waters of Gullwing and Echo.

First off, I was surprised. I hooked a fish three minutes after beginning to fish rather than the traditional hour and a half wait. But low and frickin' behold, as I reached to grab the net I had lodged between my back and backpack the damn pike snapped my line. Shitcakes. Onwards I continued, kayaking and fishing away and then five minutes later another pike bite. This time I decided to kayak to shore, get out of the kayak, and bring the fish in from there. So, I kayaked to shore, got out of the kayak, started reeling, and the damn pike snapped my line. Shitcakes, again. That's thirty-six dollars in lures lost in the last eight hours and ten minutes fishing, leaving me happy to be fishing but frustrated to be sure. I had brought one more lure with me, my Husky Jerk Rapala, which I've owned for five years and never caught a damn thing with. I fished with it for a solid hour without catching anything, travelling the extent of Echo Lake, one corner of Gullwing, and then back out towards the portage between Echo and Clear Lake. But then, minutes away from calling it a night, a pike snatched it, and, since I had loosened my drag considerably, found itself into my net after a brief struggle. Afterwards, I kayaked to shore in order to remove the hook from its startled mouth. By the time I was finished detaching the hook, there wasn't much life left in the old pikester so I dropped it into the water to see if it would swim away. Since it simply turned and started floating on its back, I figured it's filletin' time. But before filletin,' I decided to try and catch another, was thwarted in my efforts, but, fortunately enough, found my trusty orange jointed Rapala, lost earlier in the evening, the same Rapala that has been hooking me fish for nine years, floating away, minding its own business, meaning that the total amount lost to the shrewd pike of Lake Echo could be reduced to a mere 23 dollars.

Upon returning home, I received some instructions on how to fillet a pike from a quick google search and promptly bungled the process due to my substitution of a serrated knife for the required fillet knife. Nonetheless, I salvaged most of the meat, probably enough for two people if served with veg and a nice rich sauce, learned that pike sushi is dangerous, and cooked it with butter, garlic, and blueberries wrapped in foil on the barbecue. I haven't sampled it yet so I'm writing in haste, but note that I'm hoping to have found a cinematic complement to my meal, Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One. I've never seen a Fuller film but Paul Schrader places him alongside Bloody Sam in his critical filmic landscape, meaning that all things may end well this evening.