Fishing in Brevig

A separate entry on fishing in the bush is necessary here.

People in Brevig catch salmon (red, king, humpy and chum) out of the Bering Sea and its bays and tributaries. While they do use rods, many also use set nets.

Pastor Brian was fishing on Friday; he worked all day catching, filleting, washing and hanging fish to dry. Ray and I got to help.

The set net sits perpendicular to the beach, just down from the Brevig church. When it's time, Brian takes a small boat out and pulls himself, hand over hand, down the length of the net, pulling fish out that have been tangled in the web. Then he hauls himself back into shore, hand over hand.

Next, he fillets them on a small table on the beach. Also on the table was a small battery powered radio, a jar of lemonade, a bag of sunflower seeds and some Morton's salt. I never actually saw him use the salt.

Brian was out there all day. He got about 80 fish. After filleting them, he keeps the tail connecting the two fillets and slices the fish (not breaking the skins) into wedges about 1 inch thick. Then the fish goes into a tub of ocean (sea) water. Enter Lisa and Ray.

Wearing rubber gloves, we pulled out the fillets and washed the blood out, sometimes scrubbing the cut flesh with the sea water. Bacteria flourishes out of blood, so we needed to get it all. We gave each fillet a final rinse in the sea, then threw it in another bucket, ready to hang. When that bucket is full, we hung it on drying racks made out of wood. The fish hangs over the wood, once fillet on each side.

It's SO MUCH work. Brian was out there at least 10 hours and came in covered in fish blood and smelling like the same. I was out there washing fish for maybe an hour and a half and even I was tired.

Though I grew up on a farm in Iowa, I forget sometimes, how much work hard work is.