Going your own way

A friend told me a story. It went something like this. In greenland, the native people would get short on meat in the spring, and they really needed meat to feed the sled dogs.

So, they would take the dog team way out on the pack ice, cut a hole, drop a line way way down with a huge hook baited with a chunk of whale meat.

If things went according to plan you would pull up a huge greenland shark, and have dog food for weeks. If you didn’t get a shark, you would eat the dogs then and there, and try to walk home before a polar bear found you.

Now, this story electrified me. Sharks, you say? Through the ice? Beneath the Aurora Borealis? While a pack of starving dogs keep the polar bears at bay?

That sounds like a hell of a fishing trip. Damn, I’M IN! I’ll buy a ticket, who could have imagined such a thing? After a little more thought I just you tubed it. Found some cool video, took 8 minutes and saved me a huge amount of money and maybe my life.

But it reminded me of another fantastic fishing story that happend recently right here, in the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula.

A friend of mine journeyed to the head waters of a beautiful mountain river armed with a tiny custom, and exquisitely made center pin rod and reel, to catch, and release whitefish.

Thats right, a custom made whitefish pin rod.

Sharks through the ice, center pin whitefish, both of these are examples of doing things far from the norm, but both strike me as interesting, and valid ways to pursue…well living.

Every fishing trip is a kind of adventure, every trip into the wilderness is an adventure. You can’t really know how its going to turn out, thats the reason to do it.

Jim Kerr

Rain Coast Guides

Forks Wa