Now we Fisk

Fishing is a huge part of the culture of Norway and certainly of our relatives, I am a pretty big fisherman myself, perhaps not as much as when I was growing up, but I still enjoy it and was super excited to try my luck in the Fjord.

Per, Bente's husband, and Terje took us out on a rather small boat...probably 15 feet or so...alot smaller than what I had imagined, but the Fjord is not so rough most of the time and we would stay very close to the shore as the sea bottom drops off quite fast.

I have to say I have had some major bad mojo when fishing in the Sea with my dad, not that I have done it more than once, but the time we went I caught nada, zilch, zip... I was having some deja vu thinking back to this and was hoping that history would not repeat itself...

Per, my dad and I each tossed our lines down to the sea floor... the lines have 4 hooks with typical lures for larger sea fish and a large weight to take it down. There is not much to this type of fishing, as Per said it... take it down then up then down again... no casting needed.

5 minutes into it Per had already landed 2 rather large Sei's... Haddock in EN... it was pretty cool, but 30 minutes later I had still not caught a fish... all that negative deja vu crap flew out the window pretty fast after that... I pulled in a good size Torsk... cod...and was off the shnide! Then the fish started rolling in we caught fish after fish after fish, it was nuts. In a 5 minute period we must have caught at least 25 Mackarel, you would literally drop your line and pull up a fish, but not just one fish but a fish on every hook... I only caught 3 at once, but dad and Per both caught 4 at once. Of course there was the one that got away, a Longe..not sure the translation or spelling, that was by far the largest fish of the day came off my hook as I was getting it in the boat. Regardless it was a kick ass fish day, we literally had a bucket of fish and not a small bucket but a big ass one.

We only fished for a few hours and we came back to the boat house to find a small crowd of our relatives waiting to see what/if we caught anything... I have to say it was very cool seeing the reception and the old school Norwegians so stoked on our good fortune. We got out of the boat and immediately Bente's dad (Ansgar) started cleaning the fish. To my surprise my dad jumped in to help, I am not sure if I have ever seen my dad clean a fish, it was cool and I think our relatives were pretty surprised that the American jumped in to do what many do not like doing. I had my turn as well, trying to keep up with Ansgar's 70 plus years of experience and trying not to cut my hand off as half the family looked on...a great experience that I will never ever forget.