Bringing Home the Bacon. Sort of.

There are few things more manly than killing your own food. Here in Yap, the most common way to bring home the (figurative) bacon is to fish for it, and on Sunday Matt went fishing in its most primal form. With a spear made of steel and a will made of iron, real men stab their meals and toss them onto the boat still wriggling, before the circling sharks get a whiff of blood in the water. Bait and tackle be damned: want a 50-pound tuna? Reef shark? White whale? No problem, just be prepared to work for it.

All right, so maybe it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but Matt did have a great time in the water. Spearfishing combines fishing and hunting, with the added thrill of spotting an occasional shark. A gig is sometimes used in shallower water, but on Sunday we went out with spear guns, which work sort of like a slingshot that fires a steel harpoon at the target.

Fish are certainly plentiful here, and Matt learned the reason for that quickly. They’re wily!

Spearfishing has a steep learning curve, and many people come back empty on their first trip. The sea floor on our fishing grounds had a mixture of sandy bottom and hard and soft corals. With some instruction from the more experienced members of the group, Matt learned not to thrash around wildly, and to wait patiently above the soft corals for the fish to get used to his presence. After a lot of frustration, Matt ended up spearing a couple of nice fish.

They sure didn’t look as big on land as they did in the water, but they were tasty nonetheless.

Spearfishing does have its downsides, of course. Matt has a part of him that would prefer taking pictures of the fish to killing them. Game fish like tuna are one thing, but Matt’s softer side led him to pass up a few shots on some of the more colorful and interesting fish that he spotted. Not that he would have hit them.

Another downside is that fishing is for men only in these parts, and Matt felt kind of bad that KC couldn’t participate. He also felt bad that she didn’t come along to share in the spoils. The fish we caught made for a delicious lunch, but they don’t travel well without a cooler, so we had to eat them on the spot. Maybe we’ll plan better next time. Thanks for reading.