Extreme Fishing (10 page)

A hundred years ago prospectors came looking for gold in the Kenai but today I struck something else that is far more precious – and, more importantly, edible:
Oncorhynchus mykiss
.
I give her one, mwah, and, holding her under the water for a slow release, allow the oxygen to gently circulate in her gills. I let go and she darts away. Closed-season rules dictate we must
release our trout today – these rules protect the species and allow them to thrive and prosper.

Nanwalek

The last part of my journey in Alaska is to travel further south along the Kenai Peninsula to the incredibly remote village of Nanwalek, home to the Sugpiaq tribe who will
be taking me fishing for an Alaskan legend, the silver salmon. Although it’s not far, the only way to get to Nanwalek is by plane – another very small plane. I turn up at Terminal 1
– it’s a shed. What’s more worrying is that the pilots are children, who toss a coin to determine which of the spotty adolescents will take us. The thirteen-year-old loses the
toss to the eleven-year-old.

‘Isn’t it past your bedtime?’ I ask, begging the director not to make me board.

He reminds me that boats can only occasionally make the crossing, and it’s impossible to reach by road.

So my eleven-year-old pilot turns out to be Alaska’s answer to the Red Baron (I was going to say Douglas Bader but then had images of an eleven-year-old being known as ‘Stumpy’
and it all got a bit messy in my head). It’s a twenty-minute flight through freezing fog and a white sky. It’s a bleak landscape and I get a good view of it as the ground comes up to
meet us fast, but the child lands the plane perfectly.

‘Well done,’ I say, tapping him on the shoulder. God, not only do I feel inadequate as an adventurer, but I feel bloody old!

Over the years, the Sugpiaq tribe have seen Russian and then American rulers, after Alaska was sold to the US by Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, which is under 2 cents an
acre! Just think what you pay for a 400-square-foot flat in London nowadays – it was a steal. The tribe now govern themselves and village chief Wally Kvashnikoff is at the airport (another
shed) to greet me.

Although Wally’s name sounds like a heavy-assault weapon, he is a modest man of few words with kind eyes. He is also an excellent hunter and fisherman. Owing to the remote location,
everything has to be brought in and out by plane, so the villagers are almost completely self-sufficient. In fact, 95 per cent of Wally and his family’s diet comes from the land, the sea and
the rivers, so angling isn’t a sport for him – it’s survival.

Today Wally and I are going in pursuit of the silver salmon (or coho), which we’ll eat at a village feast tonight. It’s 27 November and Thanksgiving here in the remote American state
of Alaska. Everyone is looking forward to the party, so Wally and I cannot return empty-handed. At this time of year, as the silvers arrive home from the Pacific to the quiet backwaters where they
were raised as parrs, they quickly turn from silver to red and green, showing that they are sexually mature. It really is extraordinary to think that the final act of these beautiful salmon before
they die will be uninhibited lovemaking with their partners . . . so at least they’ll pass away with a smile on their faces! I comfort myself with this thought but I can’t help feeling
choked by the sheer magnitude of this species’ journey, followed by such a tragic yet passionate end. It’s their beautiful and poignant sacrifice that touches my luvvie soul. That said,
I still want to catch one for our supper – especially seeing as it’s going to die anyway. They can’t all be for the bears.

The snow flutters down as we cast our lines. I am freezing to the bone and need to stamp my feet and clap my hands every few minutes to keep my circulation going. Wally quietly casts, seemingly
unaffected by the cold. After two hours of non-stop casting the fishing, like the conversation, is going nowhere.

‘Are there fish in here?’ I ask Wally.

‘Yes, we just have to find them,’ he replies.

Honestly, if my family lived and relied on my fishing prowess to provide food, sadly they would starve and eventually leave me, standing alone with my rod like an impotent angler. But November
is a difficult time to catch a fish in this part of the world; these guys are weakened, waiting to die, and therefore not really in the mood for feeding.

Time after time salmon between ten and twenty pounds swim into view, but even when I cast right in front of their noses they’re not interested. As salmon are technically unable to feed
once they hit freshwater, because their stomachs can’t digest food, I need to provide an irritant to the fish. The males become incredibly territorial and very possessive over their area and
their partner, so any intruder, no matter how small, would wish they’d never ventured anywhere near the horny salmon. I cast a spoon lure, which has worked for me before on the River Coquet,
and – yes, you guessed it – absolutely nothing. Time after time the fish just don’t want to know.

I deliver my final PTC informing the viewers that on tonight’s menu is fish surprise . . . the surprise being that there is no fish. It’s a sad angling end to a beautiful backdrop
but just as I’m reeling my line to the bank to perform my last cast of the day, WHAM! I get a take! My spoon is no more than ten feet from the bank but astonishingly a female silver has
decided to attack my lure. Everyone is astounded and no one more than me. Even though this girl’s travelled thousands of miles, has spawned and is on hunger strike, about to die, she fights
like a woman possessed.

She runs, and just when I think I have her she leaps five feet out of the water and runs again, taking another thirty metres of line with her. All I can do is keep the line tight. One of us has
to tire and this time it’s not going to be me. Wally and his large family are expecting food on the table and they are relying on me to get it there. I reel her in and get her to the
snow-covered bank. She is a fifteen-pound silver, a dark burgundy colour, similar to a sockeye salmon. I pick her up to inspect her and she is covered in snow like icing sugar. Her tail is worn
from creating her redd (nest) on the gravel riverbed, in which she will have laid her eggs. This tail is so powerful that it has not only migrated 4,000 miles but then also dug a hole while
fighting the current – and all on an empty stomach.

‘Happy Thanksgiving, Wally. Last cast! Get in!’ I say.

I am so chuffed not to be going back empty-handed and also proud that I have landed a silver on the famous Kenai. Wally says he never doubted me for a second . . . Millions would, Wally,
millions would.

Wally’s wife prepares all the ingredients for our Thanksgiving feast, including locally grown vegetables as well as herbs and spices. She uses every part of the fish save
the entrails. The fish head is used to create a delicious soup. All I’m thinking is that I hope it tastes as good as it smells, because the aroma is unbearably beautiful. We all agree fish
tastes wonderful when you have caught it yourself – though these people have probably never tasted the supermarket stuff.

That said, many of the tribe do not eat as healthily as Wally and his family. Unfortunately the Sugpiaq suffered terribly in 1989, along with their fellow Alaskans, when the oil tanker
Exxon
Valdez
spilled over 10 million gallons of crude oil. The spill, at that time the largest in US history, affected 1,100 miles of Alaskan coastline and killed or poisoned almost all the fish. As
a result the tribe was sent an abundance of processed food by American charities and well-wishers. Concerned about contamination during the years after the spill, native people abandoned about half
the wild foods they would normally have eaten. Their bodies were unable to assimilate the imported food and sadly there is now an obesity crisis within the tribe, just as there is across most of
the West. Hopefully, with Wally at the helm of the tribe, the Sugpiaq people will return to their healthy lifestyle and the eating patterns of their forefathers.

Down at the village hall, the party is underway. Thanksgiving is the celebration of the first time native people shared their food with British settlers. Four hundred years
later they are just as generous. We arrive with our stewed salmon and soup and I sit down and join Wally and his family at the table and tuck in – it’s delicious. I try other food on
offer, too. With a little Nanwalek ketchup, which is seal blubber boiled down into a waxy paste. It tastes like, well, erm, seal fat. It kind of has the Marmite effect: you love it or hate it, and
let me tell you I hate it! I later discovered that it has been known to cause botulism. This strangely didn’t concern me. Well, I work with actors with faces full of botox – a deadly
strain of the bacteria. A couple of air kisses could be as lethal as a bad portion of seal fat – it’s a good reason to avoid kissing Simon Cowell, ladies! Anyway, before you think of
freezing your faces in permanent surprise, digest this: botulism is a lethal toxin that blocks nerve function and causes paralysis. I mean, what muppet wants to inject that into their face? All I
can say is it’s bonkers.

After a bellyful of delicious local food there is only one way to end this Thanksgiving evening, and that’s with a song. I get hold of a guitar and perform an old northeastern folk song
entitled ‘They Don’t Write Them Like That Anymore’. I can see one of Wally’s teenage daughters thinking, ‘Thank the Lord for that.’ I hit the final chord.

‘Goodnight, Nanwalek, it’s good to be back! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.’

November 2008, Series 2

As I walk through Boston Arrivals I spot the director, Jamie Goold, among the throng. Immediately I can see something’s wrong. He walks purposely over to me,
stony-faced.

‘What’s happened? [pause] Is it my dad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘No, he’s had a heart attack.’

It’s a surreal and emotional introduction to Boston.

I phone the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. Dad is in intensive care but able to talk.

‘Are you OK? Jesus, Dad.’

‘I’m all right, son.’

‘I’m organising a flight home first thing tomorrow.’

‘Don’t you dare get on the plane. All the family are here, and we love you and I am fine.’

‘But I want to be there.’

‘There’s nothing you can do. I know you were in
Casualty
but an actor in a hospital is about as useful as a chocolate teapot,’ he laughs, short of breath.

I really didn’t want to stay. The truth is that I was scared to death and I wanted to be with my family. I had never faced the possibility of life without Dad before and it shook me to the
core.

‘Dad, did it hurt?’ I ask, like one of Job’s Comforters, part of me wanting to know how serious it was, the other what it will be like when I go through it later on!

He says, ‘I have never felt pain like it.’

This is a man who has worked down the mines all his life and has suffered slipped discs and a crooked back, like his father, a miner before him, all of this resulting in a perpetual stoop when
he walks. He’s endured severe nerve damage in his fingers (vibration white finger) from working at the coalface but never complains. He’s always managed the pain by swimming for miles
in the North Sea, irrespective of what time of year it is. Now that’s hardcore.

‘Imagine you are in a room and the walls are closing in,’ he says. ‘And they start to squeeze your ribs from right to left and the crushing is not stopping and the pain is
getting worse. It takes a lot to drop me to my knees.’

I imagine him bent double in searing agony. I’ve never seen my father vulnerable before. Growing up, Robson Senior, or Big Rob, as he is known to his mates, was the hardest man in the
village. He’s only five-foot-nine but stocky with huge shoulders, built like a juggernaut. When people ask me to describe my father, the best word is ‘huge’. He is huge both in
character and stature, not an ounce of fat on him, and boy, could he handle himself in a fight – of which there were many. Like the time when a young guy knocked all my teeth out and Dad went
round to his house, pushed him aside and chinned his father! Or if ever he was woken up by people on the street outside, he would thunder down the stairs, give someone a smack in the mouth and ask
questions later. No one dared to interrupt his sleep. If David, Joanna, Dawn or I did, we knew not to be in the same postcode.

My younger brother, David, inherited Dad’s build and toughness, but that gene wasn’t passed on to me. I always say, ‘A runner is better than a fighter and an ego heals faster
than a broken jaw.’

‘Make a good programme, Robson.’

‘I will, and I’ll be over to see you in six days.’

The phone clicks off. I exhale deeply, feeling as though there is a tight band around my head. I am poleaxed by anxiety and want to blub like a child.

Tonight we are meant to be going out on a trawler for three days in pursuit of Atlantic bluefin tuna, a fish that can grow to record sizes of over 1,400 pounds. Men risk life
and limb to hunt these creatures because one that size could be worth around half a million dollars on the Japanese market. Our timing is perfect: the bluefin are running. But after the news of my
father, and indeed the ordeal of the
Ocean Pearl
a few weeks ago, I just can’t face it. Mercifully Jamie has asked the trawlermen if we can postpone our trip until the morning,
explaining the situation, but my dad being poorly means nothing to them – they have to make a living – so they go without us.

Jamie calls a production meeting with Jonathan, the AP from the Alaska episode, cameraman Mike Carling and the sound-man Patrick Boland, and we decide to go out on the trawler at the back end of
the week. We’ll just have to pray we haven’t missed the bluefin run. We re-jig the schedule as best we can. Luckily Jamie is an expert at thinking on his feet.

After the meeting Mike takes me to one side.

‘What you’re going through with your dad – I’ve been there. If you need to talk I know exactly how you’re feeling.’