In one of my articles I shared my fishing experiences. However with carp fishing professor Virginijus Virbickas we had also other fishing trips.
An hour and a half away from Tokyo in the corner of the Miura Peninsula there is the small island of Jogashima. This sland is a real mecca for rock fishing. If you go for a weekend you’ll see hundreds of anglers trying to catch the fishof a lifetime. In fact, most dream of catching red sea bream.
Well, to be fair, Jogashima is not only famous as a fishing destination. It is also the gateway to Saint Peter. The island is connected to the main island of Japan by a single bridge. It turns out that bridge is one of the most popular choices for jumpers. I explain. If you are going to commit suicide you need to choose the right place for it. You can choose the Chuo train line in Tokyo. The view is not aesthetically pleasing and it is a financial hardship for the family. Another option is the famous forest near Mount Fuji. The forest is famous for all sorts of scary stories. If you want to see a corpse this forest is the perfect choice. And of course the island of Jogashima is a good option. The currents between the island and the main island leave no chance of getting out once you’ve climbed down the bridge. In a word, an aesthetically interesting option. Maybe that’s why the fish are biting well.
We met a bunch of Chinese people while rock climbing. People came ready to fish. Despite the light rain they took shelter under the edge of the cliff and made a lunch of mackerel in a pot on a portable stove. The logic is simple. You pull a mackerel throw it in the pot pour some tomato sauce on it and you have a pretty good mackerel. If you need more preparation you can boil the mackerel and pour a splash of sake wine over the water. The sake eliminates the specific taste of the fish. Then boil the water again add the sliced ginger, sake, sugar or mirin and soy sauce. At the very end the miso bean paste should be seasoned and the super dish is ready. So the Chinese don’t hold back. As Chinese wisdom says we eat everything with legs except chairs. Other wisdom says we eat anything that moves except mum and dad.
After climbing the rocks Virginius and I snuck off to see how the locals fish in the harbour area. Some are trying to catch squid others are playing with light jigs targeting very tasty bottom fish, others are furiously trying their luck at catching sea bass.
A Japanese man fishing on a leash with fake shrimps catches our eye. The man turns out to own a restaurant in Tokyo, so he took the day off on Tuesday to have a little fun. A swarm of fish, stuffed with feed, is wriggling like a caterpillar. Two or three small mackerel, 15-20 cm in length are hooked within five seconds. Pulling, casting, pulling, casting, pulling, casting. And so it keeps going. And we’re just watching to make sure four mackerel don’t get hooked. Because the fear is that that swarm of little fish will drag his whole rod out to sea.
We continue along the coast. Here two old men are trying to catch a black bream. The old men have mastered their craft. You can see they have been fishing for decades. Of course, like all anglers, they tell us that yesterday they had better fishing results but the whether has changed and all the bream have moved to other latitudes. When the fishing is not going well, the most important thing is to find the culprit. While discussing the farm and the bees, one old man pulls an ace and declares that he knows the secret weapon to catching bream. In a couple of weeks, he says, the season will be open, so we’ll have to fish on watermelon. There are ten million different signatures used in carp fishing, but even Virginius has his gills open. You mean on watermelon? Yeah, the old man will say, our little fish love watermelon. Ok, we ask the old man what the logic is here. Watermelons have always grown very well in this area. The climate is right. So they say here comes the watermelon season. Where to chill it. There are no fridges. So you take a bag and go to the sea. Then when you get back from the sea, you start chopping and slicing. And where to put all the peelings and seeds. Organic material, so it’s off to sea for disposal. If you repeat this kind of thing year after year and several hundred people do it, then you can count on the local fish starting to feast on the watermelons. Well, yeah. It would take the help of myth-busters to verify the truth of the story. Virginius and I are still trying to sort out the what and how in the shelves of our brains, while another old man, sitting in the cold, interjects. For example in Izu Peninsula old anglers have been fishing on oranges for ages. We both nearly fell off our feet when we heard the new advice. And who says the Japanese are not inventive? Watermelons, oranges …
