Fishing

While in Bodrum, we mentioned to Hamza, our incredibly helpful hotel owner, that we were interested in going out sailing or doing something on the water. He made some calls but everyone was done doing sailing excursions for the season. Instead he found something better. Hamza found a friend of his who said he would take us along fishing if we were interested. We drove up to the northern part of the Bodrum peninsula with Hamza to meet up with the captain (whose name we completely forgot, it was a very exotic Turkish name). We set off into the Aegean Sea on his small fishing boat, 'Kaptain Ali John'. Once the captain found a good spot, we dropped anchor, baited our hooks and dropped our line. We used very simple fishing 'poles', it's a round plastic disc with the fishing line wrapped around the edges, it actually works very well and is convenient. I got the first catch of the day, a smaller fish but nonetheless it was a fish. I was very excited, I'm not much of a fisherman so this was a big deal. This fish ended up being my only fish of the night but I was satisfied. 

It was so peaceful out in the Aegean on a little boat, slowly swaying with the wake and beautiful landscape all around us. We met Judy on the boat, who came to Turkey on vacation a few years back and did a boat excursion with our captain. They ended up falling in love, so she left everything behind in Scotland and moved down to Bodrum to be with the man she loves. She was a pleasure to chat with and listening to her story of life in Bodrum compared to Scotland was fascinating. Hamza also brought along his twelve year old daughter, Hazel. Unfortunately she didn't know any English so talking didn't really work, but she was a good fishing companion. We tried out a few different spots for fish and ended up with about 12 fish total for the night. But the highlight was probably the sunset. We took photos but I don't think they do it justice. The sky looked marvelous with so many different colors and hues, it was hard to believe that this was real life and not a painting. It was one of those moments where you have to put your fishing line down and watch this beautiful thing unfold before you, while you sit in a little boat in the middle of a great big sea, gently rocking. It was indescribable. 

After getting back to shore, the captain gave us a bag with all of the fish that were caught that night as a gift. We were very grateful since between Julia and I, we only caught one fish. Once we got back to our hotel, the chef fried up the fish for us and we had us a nice little fish dinner. The perfect ending to a fishing trip.

- Yuriy

Our dinner-