I Like Eating Fish, but I Won’t Go Fishing

Tagged with fish, fishing, food, philippines, united states on June 17, 2024

I like eating fish without having to catch it first. That task is best left to fishermen, who either enjoy it for recreation or do it for a living. I haven’t done any kind of fishing since I was a teenager, back in the 1970s. Today, I wouldn’t have the stamina to catch a single fish, even if I wanted to.

I’m not familiar with any form of sea or net fishing, and I’m not familiar with fishing for sport. The only form I’m familiar with is angling, using a rod and reel, but I don’t even remember how to tie fishing line to a hook.

Fishing When I Was Young

I have vague memories of my father’s family, all eleven of us, going on camping trips until I was 13 years old. A couple of my father’s brothers (my uncles) would tag along and go fishing with my father, while everyone else spent their time camping. I can barely remember all the lakes we visited, but they were all in Arizona.

One of my brothers-in-law (R.I.P.) taught me how to angle at the Picacho Reservoir close to home, sometime before I was 12. He taught me how to tie hooks and when to use floats and sinkers, skills I used while I was living in Hawaii later on. The only thing I ever caught there was catfish, but it was pretty easy to catch them. They couldn’t resist the chicken guts he had me use as bait.

When my father’s family was living in Hawaii, I was practically forced to accompany my father to his favorite fishing spots on Saturday afternoons. He rarely caught any fish. I’m pretty sure he just liked going through the motions. I remember him catching a perch and two lobsters (unintended), but that’s about it. My younger brother and I always had better luck.

There was a beach, in front of a reef, not far from where we lived. We would ride our bicycles (carrying buckets, rods and reels) to that beach on Sunday mornings, on the days the family didn’t visit a beach park for swimming. We would catch quite a few fish within a couple of hours. I don’t know what species they were, except that they were about a foot long, with red skin and teeth. We went through a lot of hooks, floats and sinkers.

The only reason my younger brother and I went fishing like that is because it was the only way we were guaranteed to have fish to eat on a semiregular basis.

Bait

I can remember my older relatives using all kinds of bait. All I know is you have to use the right bait for what you’re trying to catch. Earthworms work for some fish, salamander tadpoles for others, and minnows for still others, but none of them work for everything. My father used pieces of squid when ocean fishing, and it rarely worked.

As I mentioned, I’ve used chicken guts for bait. I don’t remember what bait I used in Hawaii, and I guess it doesn’t really matter now. My brother and I still caught more fish than our father.

Eating Fish as an Adult

After my family moved to the Philippines in 2006, I started developing an affinity for all kinds of fish. I’ve eaten Tilapia, Milkfish, various Tuna species (fresh and canned) and other fish species I can’t remember the names of.

When we were stuck in the United States during the pandemic, we at all kinds of seafood. Here’s a short list:

• Crab
• Flounder
• Haddock
• Halibut
• Pollock
• Rainbow Trout
• Salmon
• Sea Bass
• Squid

We bought some of it at Asian markets, and ate some of it at restaurants. I avoided the crab, because I don’t like breaking shells, and the squid, because it takes a long time to chew.

Fishing in the Philippines

Like everything we eat, fish is expensive when bought from supermarkets. Even the fish being sold by street vendors seems more expensive than it should be. I have yet to observe anything other than net fishing at one of the beaches in Olongapo, probably because I haven’t been looking.

Even though I like to eat fish, I will never take up fishing again just to eat it. If that was the only way I could get fish, I would do without.

Image by fikret kabay from Pixabay