Atlantic ambrosia

I was given an Atlantic 'trout' that melted in my mouth.

:D

I think it was a variety of salmon. And, talk about rich!

It wasn't big, but sweet, pink, and delicate.

I would imagine that there aren't enough of them to make a whole fishery of the species.

It was cleaned so I baked it, then took off the skin and went after the bones.

Of course, I had to tidy up the bits that came off in this process, and any thin bits that wouldn't travel well...so the meat shrunk accordingly. Then, of course, I just stood there and gobbled.

Nobody else at our house cared. Dh catches salmon to eradicate the species.

That's why he told me, in the first 1/2 hour we met, that he was going to take me fishing.


I fooled him, however...I became a bottom fisher, red snapper was my game.

When he bought me a Peetz (sp.) rod and reel and a metal bait 'fish', and took me to the cliff face at Mittlenatch (sp.) Island, a bird sanctuary near the island where my mother was raised, I dropped the 1 pound lure 235 feet and began to try to slowly bounce it off the bottom rocks.

I couldn't.

It was caught, I thought between rocks.

So I gave the rod to dh and he gave it a mighty tug...then handed it back.

I began to reel that suc*** in, because there was a fish on it.

Then the line began to move in a zig-zag pattern, back and forth. This was no snapper.

It was a 20-pound pink salmon, and it was a head-fish.

A head-fish has a fisheries implant which tells them when and where it was released.

When you clean a head-fish you weigh it, cut off the head, tag that, and put it in a bucket near the cleaning table up from your marina.

The fisheries department collects the buckets daily, processes the information, and mails you a little plastic pin with a nice letter of thanks for participating in their salmonid program.

(We can recognize a head-fish because they clip off a tiny fin the salmon doesn't use. The bald eagles wait over by the creek/river mouth for the proceeds of the cleaning tables.)


Red snappers don't zig-zag...they come up with their mouths wide open, like a bucket of water. Now that's work!

A big, knuckle-buster wooden reel is needed because the lighter reels would just pull all out of shape.


So that's the story of my first 'snapper', a big salmon who was sitting on the bottom on a hot day, waiting for me.

All the snapper we did catch changed dh's fishing experience entirely...drift fishing is entirely different from trolling. I even caught a clam who opened his mouth when my hook was drifting by.

Thanks for the opportunity to talk about sweet fishing memories. That's how I was courted.

A woman who can handle fish, and what I call 'square water', and enjoy herself, is a treasure to some men.

F.



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