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Cape Cod &the Islands
August 6th, 2004 |
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| FishWire Coordinator: | Dave Churbuck |
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Toasted Chicken Fish
The father of an old girlfriend once expressed amazement and a touch of disapproval when he discovered I knew how to cook after I made the ingrate a late night omelet. The older generation still thinks it is extremely sissy-like for a guy to know how to cook. Real men order take-out or wait around, with big eyes, for a woman to serve them something. I hope my mother doesn’t read this, because my brothers and I learned how to cook out of pure survival instinct. It was cook or risk starvation. Mother was a fan of anything that was frozen, brown, covered with gravy, and which lived in five-pound disposable pans. ("Alex, I’ll take Mystery Meat for $500: What is Salisbury Steak?") My grandmother was a product of the Great Depression and thought gelatin was a major food group. She reached rock bottom with a lime Jello disaster that she made in a bundt mold. Somehow she managed to suspend the laws of gravity and suspend-- through the center of the green, quivering ring -- a tube of horseradish-flavored mayonnaise. Newspaper recipes were her cookbook. Toasted Chickenfish anyone? (major bonus points to anybody who knows the name of the author of the Chickenfish recipe. Hint: it resulted in an official reprimand of newspaper columnist Mike Royko) Grandmother treated a can of Spam like it was chateaubriand: crosshatched with a knife, studded with a half-dozen cloves, and topped with a ring of Dole pineapple and a red maraschino cherry, then oiled down with a squirt of Log Cabin. Fish was rarely on the menu in my childhood unless it came out of a box, was pre-breaded, and could be cooked on a cookie sheet in under an hour in a 450 degree oven. My father, the original meat-and-potato man, forbade fish or chicken in the house. Chicken, because he had a phobia of chickens due to his World War II duties as keeper of the household chicken coop; fish, because his mother would can bluefish with a pressure cooker in Mason jars to lay up some protein for the winter months.
The canned bluefish was just a quaint myth until I cleaned out the cellar last winter and found a sixty-year old Mason jar filled with what appeared to be a pickled demon fetus from the Omen IV. We opened it on the front lawn while wearing heavy rubber gloves. The grass is still dead there, like some sort of crop circle left by aliens. Here are some recipes from the Churbuck Culinary Academy of Ruined Food, courtesy of my predecessors who never met a fish they could stomach: Honey, the Dog Is Eating Grass Again Bluefish
Amber’s Kill the Schoolie Surprise Take one woefully undersized striped bass because your eight-year old niece, Amber the Ritalin addict from Athol, caught it and her parents don’t give a hoot about the 28" limit because Amber caught it and Amber is going to eat her first fish taken on her first fishing trip, in her first boat, on her first ocean. The fun part is smuggling the fish ashore so someone you know doesn’t see you taking short fish and drops a dime on you with the Environmental Police (who don’t exist anyway). Photograph the fish like paparazzi hounding Sean Penn outside a Hollywood bar. Don’t worry, unlike Sean it won’t fight back or spit at you. Permit Amber to drop it in the dirt a few times for seasoning. Do your best to make Amber cry when you start to cut it up. Then decide that maybe Amber needs to experience the joys of eating a whole fish. Leave the head and scales on but take out the guts. Show Amber what was in the fish’s stomach. Tell her that the partially digested sand eel is really a little girl’s little finger. Fill the stomach cavity with stuff from the bottom of the vegetable drawer: limp celery, nasty scallion stalks, a whole unpeeled clove of garlic and a brown lemon. Sew up the cavity with needle and thread and tell Amber that’s what they do to the lips of shrunken heads before they shrink them. Place in shallow baking dish. Send complaining children to corner store for a bottle of Kraft’s Italian Salad Dressing. Pour entire bottle of salad dressing over the fish. Bake or broil (it doesn’t really matter), until you’re not sure if the fish is done or not. Serve with great ceremony to Amber and her parents. Discover on first bite that a) THERE ARE BONES IN MY FISH! and b) THIS FISH IS RAW! Call Pizza One, Subs Two and order a large linguica and bacon pizza and a couple Steak Bombs for your heart. Leave the fish behind the garage and attract varmints to your property. They won’t be back again and neither will Athol Amber and her parents. Found in a Fat Man’s Underpants Sushi Congratulations, you finally caught a bonito. Next week you will win Megabucks or be struck by lightning. Now you too can hang around the coffee maker at work and tell that blowhard Mike from Receiving that you are a member of the Super Elite Bonito club. Forget all the recipes that bonito-heads have told you about. No one catches enough of them to know what to do with them. Don’t bleed the fish. It makes a mess. Don’t ice the fish because you didn’t bring any ice and who the heck expects to catch a fish anyway? Follow the photography advice in the Kill the Schoolie Surprise. The more pictures the better. Take the pictures out front by the sidewalk so people will see that you have caught a bonito. Tell them it is a Giant Bluefin if they ask you what it is. Attempt to clean the fish and discover that bonito don’t follow the rules of fish skeletons and have an internal structure devised by M.C. Escher. Waste an inordinate amount of precious bonito meat trying to figure out why the damn thing won’t filet like a bluefish. Leave the meat on the cutting board while you run to your computer to Google this recipe. Flies will land on it, defecate, and lay their eggs. Realize that you do not have: Drive to Stop and Shop and spend a mere $50 on the aforementioned non-essentials. More flies will flavor the fish while you are gone. Come home. Boil water for the rice. Read the instructions, for sushi rice is unlike any other kind of rice and requires a summa cum laude chemistry major from Worcester Polytechnic Institute to pull off successfully. Give up. The rice will be ruined and guess what? It needs to chill for a couple hours before you can use it. Don’t bother chilling. It won’t matter.
Pile the torn seaweed, steaming rice, wasabi and precious bonito on a fancy, vaguely Asian looking platter and share with friends. Remember, in Japanese cuisine, presentation is everything, so use your fingers and make a pretty design. Like a smiley face. Dare one of your friends to eat a piece of wasabi big enough to cover his or her thumbnail. Go into hysterics when the fool actually does it, has an asthma attack, and begs to be taken to the emergency room for a tracheotomy. In thirty seconds, after it is all gone, realize you have spent $50 dollars for a bad appetizer and have ruined a pan with sushi rice which has set more solidly than a broken-down cement truck. Ah so. You can stare at the sushi rice, stale seaweed, rice vinegar, and wasabi powder for the next five years in your pantry just in case you win the lottery and catch another bonito. Got a favorite bad fish recipe? Share them with the gang in the forums. News of the week: Ah, August already? Okay, other than some wicked humidity and oppressive heat, what was your excuse for not fishing this past week? The first hurricane of the season just churned by the coast, kicking up some totally rad and tubular surf along the south-facing shores of the islands. Dude. Just say whoa. The north side still seems like the place to be. The water is cooler and like humans, fish dig cooler water. Outer Cape anglers are beside themselves with mung and seals. Nantucket Sound is pretty barren except for ratty bluefish and fluke and the bonito are still taking their time in showing up to mess with our heads. What’s a poor fly fisherman to do? Mow the lawn? The best is yet to be, so take a chill pill and go mini-golfing or wait for the hot weather and hurricane to push some summer speedsters into our neighborhood. Or prove me wrong and email me a report of your success. Don't forget to send me your own reports, and until next week...
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My brother and I took the tale of canned bluefish as pure Cape Cod legend, up there with stealing coal and catching cabbages that fell off of trucks as part of the "penny-saved-penny earned" lectures we were subjected to whenever the old gent finished paying the monthly bills and decided we would live without electricity for the next month (his favorite economizing move was to make orange juice with the frozen stuff but forbid it ever being shaken or stirred. The idea was to add more water over time, allowing the orange sausage of concentrate to hang on the bottom of the bottle, pale orange water above it). 
Slice up the bonito into little strips. Lay a sheet of seaweed on the bamboo mat. Lay a blob of steaming rice on the seaweed. Stick some bonito on the rice. Roll the whole mess up like a big fish spliff. Mix up the wasabi powder with some water. Cut the fish spliff up into sushi rings and realize that the hot rice has made the seaweed soggy and it won’t cut. (take solace, a sushi chef serves a 33-year apprenticeship and you’ve been at it for only an hour)Cape Cod Regions
| NEWS |
| Okay, other than some wicked humidity and oppressive heat, what was your excuse for not fishing this past week? The first hurricane of the season just churned by the coast, kicking up some totally rad surf along the south facing shores of the islands. Dude. The north side still seems like the place to be. Can you say tuna? The water is cooler and like humans, fish dig cooler water. Outer Cape anglers are beside themselves with mung and seals. Nantucket Sound is pretty barren except for ratty bluefish and fluke and the bonito are still taking their time in showing up to mess with our heads. What’s a poor fly fisherman to do? Mow the lawn? The best is yet to be, so take a chill pill and go mini-golfing and wait for the hot weather and hurricane to push some summer speedsters into our neighborhood. Or prove me wrong and email me a report of your success. |
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Captain Bob Paccia reports: "Now that the Buzzards Bay waters have heated up to summertime temperatures, it’s time to do some "deep thinking." That’s right; if you want to get a shot at the larger stripers, you’re going to have to get your flies down deep to where the big fish go when water temperatures rise. Keep in mind too, that the larger the bass, the less likely they are to move too far to attack bait or your fly. So, you have to make sure that your fly is at the proper depth to be in their strike zone. "At this time of the season we fish heavy sinking lines, running in line-weights from 300 to 500 grain. Using these heavyweight lines does take some getting used to, so try to get in some practice before your trip. Be sure that you know how fast your line sinks. For several reasons you can’t go by the sink rate specs that the manufacturers give you, as usually they are a bit exaggerated. Also, the manufacturers do their testing in calm testing pools. We on the other hand, are dealing with strong currents, wind and wave action. All of which hamper a sinking lines ability to sink. Learn your lines "true" sink rate and you can modify your sink count to match the existing conditions. I see a lot of people using sinking lines but they never let the line sink before they start their stripping. Their line never gets down much below the surface. That doesn’t help them much if their depth finder is telling them that the targeted fish is at 15 feet. "Heavy sinking lines used on 9-10 weight fly rods tend to overload the rods enough to allow us to quickly make extra long casts with a minimum of only 2-3 backcasts. This is so important because saltwater gamefish move rapidly and you may only get off a single cast before the fish move on. Also, in heavily weeded conditions, as we’ve experienced recently with extra high moon tides, you have to make many quick casts and you only get one or two strips before your fly is weeded." "For mid or late summer success, do some "deep thinking." |
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Captain Joe LeClair is in his element. SBFT! |
"We are catching and realeasing Bluefin tuna on fly and light tackle off and on for the last three weeks now. This past week was excellent and we landed fish from 25-200 lbs. I have seen the tuna move accross and area that was no less than 100 miles in three short days. I have run approx. 700 miles this week chasing them. We are running both the World Cat 33' and the Glacier Bay 22' trying to keep up with these speedy little devils. I have had many great ops with the fly rod around the right time in the tide and on some days all day. They are feeding on tinker macs one day, small herring the next, then the dredded sand eels (will not eat). All of this is pretty typical for Tuna fishing at any time of year, even August :) We will have days that people will catch more than one and the next day none. I am excited to be trying out several new fly rods that are designed for Bluefin Tuna. The rods these days are getting so much be! tter and the castability of these rods is supperior to many of the rods of the past. With stronger hooks, fly lines, backing, and reels with great drags these fish can be boated and realeased in a very short time. With the current regulations for only one fish per boat, per day we have been realeasing almost all of the fish that we catch that are in the boat quickly in the event we land one that will not make it back.|
Bill Downing reports on Thursday morning: "Still decent striper fishing on the west tide. The first hour I picked up 8 or 9 high schoolies and one 32 incher, with no bluefish cutoffs. They were way out for the most part, and I needed 4-5 oz to get down. On the last half of the west, the blues moved in as if on cue but I caught a couple to six lbs, had a couple of sluggo cutoffs, and caught another half dozen bass with one around 35 inches or so. When the blues moved in, a long cast with a fast retrieve after the drift evaded most of them. I also switched to bucktails, but the blues would make short work of the trailers and even sometimes the bucktail hair! Eventually they moved out about an hour before low slack. "Checked out around Portugee Hole for breaking fish after sunup. Saw a lot of bait lazily swimming around in the middle, unmolested." TonyO fished the Canal on Wednesday morning and reported: "Much slower than yesterday, 2 fish in 3 casts on sluggos and a couple on eels. Fish were breaking, but I only had 2 hits on plugs(did not have my plugging rod so I couldn't reach most of them). Small keepers, nothing big for me today." BobG reported on Tuesday: |
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Well, I cannot tell a lie. I did not fish last week, so this report is based on hearsay and gossip from those who did. Let's see, the good news is the weather was nasty enough to keep the boat traffic down. The bad news is the weather was nasty enough to keep the angling population at home for the most part. What I do know is this: Brown sharks are being caught at night at the entrances to the bays. And not on flies. Bluefish still are the species of the week, but they're hanging in the mid-Sound rips by and large. It is time for the annual speedster reports to start coming in from the western side of the region -- Succconnesset Shoal to Waquoit -- but curiously, none yet. Stripers are around and I saw one on the beach in Cotuit two nights ago. It looked lonely. Bob Parsons writes: "Spent the morning mostly at Waquoit. The channel was wall to wall breaking fish. Most blues, 2# charters would have had a field day, (although the occassional bass might of ruined his reputation). |
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Captain Steve Purcell at Larry's Tackle brings good tidings of Sarda Sarda: "Shore fishing for bonito began in earnest this week as the sarda came in strong and in good numbers, First day of really good shore fishing for the Bonito was Monday!! The reports of shore spots were: Vinyard Haven Harbor ( Eastville and East Chop) had very good fishing; reports of a fish or two from the Big bridge; some bonito at the Gut on Chappy. Several big pods of fish were reported by boaters in both Vineyard Haven and Edgartown Harbors. The fish were fast moving and finicky. Menemsha and Lobsterville are still fishing the best from the beaches. The boats guys "up island" are still doing well. Woodshole continues to have bass in the rocks when the tide is screaming, and Hedgefence rip-runners have been reporting multiple hook-ups. There are STILL tons of baby squid in the rips. Hot flies were Bonito Ed's Bonito bandit and Small white Gartside Gerglers. Spin lures were #1 green Deadly dicks and the 1/2 oz. Hammer. Fishing has been moderate for this time of year.The weather has STILL been like June: Very foggy, thunder storms and fronts coming from every direction. "DOG FISH BAR. is fishing on and off again Reports of fish being landed continue to come in It seems this perennial favorite is producing best late at night. Still a lot of fish in Menemsha harbor. Flyrod stripers up to 20-38" are coming in from the back side. Big Deer hair sliders and small sand eel patterns are working well. Some nights it can be aggravating trying to compete with so much bait. White Slugos,small Bombers and storm shad are the go to lures. "Wasque had a HUGE bluefish blitz Wendesday -- right in the middle of the afternoon. The whole beach had fish, and the action stayed furious for several hours.Gut has been fishing well. Bass are coming off the beach at Wasque, but mostly at night. The Gut has 2 to 4 pound Blues making the bass fishing there a little tough. Dukes County Beach is NOW OPEN heading to Chappy. Common lures are working well there. Green Roberts 2 1/4 oz to 3 oz. 2-3oz Kastmasters and Hopkins also. Guys are doing well with the large storm shad(bunker) at the tail end of the rips.Casting as far as they can letting it drop to bottom and a slow retieve. "The Boat guys are having a tough time getting their limits.Some crummy weather again slowed even this down.Wire, bait, light tackle and flyfishing, are doing good in all the common spots. Middle Ground has a good amount of fish. Some of the bass are moving into the deeper water, but there's still plenty of bait in the rips. Bluefish up to 13 pounds reported on the south shore, mostly around the Wasque Rips area. Bluefish from shore are anywhere from 3-8 pounds. Boats in the deeper water are up to 15 pounds. "The offshore reports are coming in. Inside Fingers, 31 Fathom hole and The Fingers still have small Bluefin. Tons in the 20 pound range. Fun but not legal sized. The dump has been raising some white marlin. Only one cought,that i know of. A little south of the Dump north of the shipping lanes. Reports of small Yellowfin and Mahi.Tuna is getting better! If you want more info, or want to give me a vineyard report, please email me at: larrys@vineyard.net Capt Steve Purcell Who else misses Captain Leslie Smith? I do. Best wishes to her and looking forward to her return next week. |
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Captain Lynne Heyer at Crossrip Outfitters filed this report on Wednesday. She extends to her thanks to all those eleemosynary Reel-Timers who responded to last week's invitation to participate in the upcoming first annual Slam Tournament to raise money to fight cystic fibrosis. She brings good tidings from the Bonito Bar: "Wow the sun is coming out. I kind of forgot what that looked like. It’s still fuzzy around the edges but it looks like the sun will shine through today. Thought I would give a quick update on the fishing. Beach Guide, Burt and his clients Mr. And Mrs. Loeb yesterday slayed Blues up at Great Point in the morning. Dave Falon was in a kayak in the harbor yesterday morning and did very well with Stripers. Seems I sent him over to Coatue and the Horse Shed area and he found some nice fish. He said they were some rolls and finning fish in the morning. He did catch some too. The Bonito Bar was hoppin’ yesterday too, Capt Jeff and John Moy landed 12 or 13 on flies in the morning. Captain Shawn slayed the Bones on spin in the am with the Anderson group. Shawn took out Dave Falon and friends caught a bunch of Blues and a few Bones on the evening tide too. Seems like everyone but me is enjoying the Bonito Bar. I might get out on Sunday. Lou Ungarelli also called in he caught a few Bones yesterday. If you do head out to the Bar this week be very careful the Billfish Tournament is going on and a few of the offshore boats are using the Smith Point channel to come and go. They are using channel 74 on the radio, just in case. It is also fun to listen and find out the catch reports during the day." Cross Rip Outfitters |
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The Outer Beaches, Chatham & Monomoy
Randy Jones reports: "This week has been interesting. For my wade guide business the fishing for my guest's has been over all educationally - dead, so-so, ok, not bad, pretty good, reeeel good to absolutely incredible! How's that for a truthful and honest week's summary fishing report. "I'll keep the light on for ya, Randy" "We also went to the National Seashore Headquarters and got a campfire permit. the only one we could get was for Marconi..so we ended up there. I brought some eels and did very well. I ended up with 5 or 6 bass in the 40 inch range (which is real good for me)...I kept one bass for a cookout we were having. But I also came across something I've never had to deal with before. I hooked 3 very big bass which I couldn't get above the surf line. It was pitch black, the Waves were pretty big and the wash was pulling strong so I didn't want to go in after them. I tried the usual ride the fish on the wave and then wait for the next wave to bring it higher but 20lb was not enough (never figured that would happen) and the weight of the fish with the water pulling down ended up snapping the line...oh well. It was pretty cool though. I still think surf fishing is a lot more fun than boat fishing." |
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Captain Terry Nugent is on the water and the fish are afraid. Book this man if you want a shot at the fish of a lifetime. "1530 Bob Pink calls and I give him the word. He's headed out and ready to check the reports for us. 1550 Bob calls and calmly tells us he is ASS DEEP in BIG tuna. We are now frantic to get OTW. I splash a bit of gas in my empty boat and haul butt to the house. Dana and I grab the 2 tuna sticks my tackle bag and a gaff (wishful thinking) We forget the digital camera and food and we get in the water by 1630. We put the hammer down as we get the word that the action has slowed (who would have guess?) We search and search until Bob's voice breaks the VHF with "GET HERE NOW" he get me #'s and we are en route. Half way there the water explodes. We are in the middle of three huge pods of BIG tuna. I cast and in short order I hook up and break off. In my rush to rig I nicked the line and the tuna is free. We work towards Bob and as his action dies ours picks up. I begin to mark fish under the boat with the mew sounder. I tell Dana and he asks "can I jig them?" I reply "I duno?" He drops down 30' and pumps the rod twice. I see the tip bounce and yell "YOUR ON!!!!" He says "REALLY?" just then the line begins to scream off the 9500 at warp speed. There is little doubt Dana's TIGHT! After 25 minutes of me yelling like a drill instructor at Dana on how to fight the fish we get a look at the monster. He gets it close and I swing the gaff. STRIKE ONE! I miss the fish clean! The next spiral and the fish is not so lucky. I get it stuck right in the sweet spot and lean back. The fish is REALLY heavy and I struggle to get it over the gunnel. Dan drops the rod and helps me lift the awkward load. The beast hits the deck with a huge thud! I have no scale that will weigh the fish and no camera on board. The tape shows the fish at 60" and my arm scale guestamates it at around 125#. It is a monster fish! Dana's first tuna. The first one on the new boat. And of course the biggest one I've ever gotten on my boat. Dana is sweating and panting. It is a beautiful sight. We quickly prep the fish for the ride back to the ramp. Dana makes arrangements to have a huge cooler and plenty of ice waiting for us, along with a digital camera. We fly back to the dock and the whole family is there. We get some photos (to be emailed to me soon) and offload the first tuna of the season. Overall a KILLER DAY! I got my boat back! The water was FAC! The fish were numerous and BIG! We got one! Lastly the gauges look and work awesome! The water temps were 67-70 degrees. The lure of choice, Yo Zuri Hydro Metal. Combo used; 7' St Croix 20-40# with a 9500ss and 50# Stealth. Final tally, 2 hookups in 2 hours. I drop the first one and miss with the gaff. Not a banner day for the Capt. Dana, fights his fish like a pro (with a little coaching) and I finally get a gaff in the biggest tuna RIPTIDE CHARTERS has ever boated! This looks to be a banner year if it stays like this!!!!" Scottne reports in the forums: "Actually got out semi-early and had a blast. 10 keepers, 1 blue, 3 woofers in 3-4 hours. Most fish were taken in the top 20 feet aside of the woofers which were down deeper. No great secrets other than I stayed away from the fleet a slight bit but the fish were balled up well. Not sure what to make of the VHF....I only saw a few keepers caught but know of another boat that hammered them in the same area. VHF made it sound like there were no fish in the bay...beats me but usually I don't listen aside of 16/9 "Biggest fish was 36 pounds, smallest was the one I kept and will be in the photo later at 18 pounds. Not sure of the length of any of them, most went right back quickly. The one I kept I had hooked through the top fin and was sure I had a 40 pounder...nope just a 20 pounder hooked so she could run. "Total reshuffling of CCB in the last few days...no fish where they'd been and no bait. Did see charlie tuna a few times when I took a run...they were totally unmolested with no boaters in sight. "Fish were still hitting when I left but work calls as does the gas gauge. Good morning for a change...sunrise was great. NW picked up and it got nasty quick as i ran through whitecaps on the way in." Bigred writes: "Had 5 hookups today of sbft, was able to bring 1 to the boat after 2:20 MIN fight, seriously, prbably weighed about 50# but we were using 25# test and medium action rods, (thank God it was a sabre). Action took place pretty much in the middle of the bay, between Marshfeild and P-town. Let the games begin." Scottne continues on topic of tuna: "I've been watching them splash for two weeks or more. Yesterday I was out bassing and seeing some nice marks with no takers. So I figured with the sun I'd switch to something flashy. Rod doubles and I think big bass....ouch...few seconds later I think I hooked a pilot whale as I couldn't stop shredding 45 pound leadcore. Got one hand on the wheel steering the boat and another chasing the line with the rod between the knees. This went on for 5 to ten minutes before I feel it let loose...minus one $30 bunker. Pick up two nice keeper bass in the next 10 minutes on a deep yozuri. Off to the races on what I think is another cow and viola back comes the yozuri with no hooks left and in fact the hook anchor is torn from the plastic....minus $30 again . Now they breach finally and I figure out I'm in a mess of bass blues and sbft. If I was properly rigged I could have had some fun but instead I made a call to a friend that fishes for them and enjoyed the show before moving off. I had a ton of fun on bass and blues but the sbft were murdering my tackle. They seem to hit anything when they are feeding like that and pretty much anything I dropped down they hit from bunker spooons, to yozuri's to fast tracs...only thing they ignored was tubes. 2 of the 3 hookups I had by mistake were on 5mph turns so they were hitting fast trolls for me anyway. Must be the moon because i've never seen so much activity in the bay. I probably lost count at 100 whales or more, a half dozen seals, 5-6 sharks none of which were basking, dolphins, sea turtles etc. Anyone know what fish the bass were eating yesterday and tuna? It's about 12" long and is some type of bottom fish....has the "feelers" on it like whiskers but is otherwise a normal round type fish...not a flounder? Bass and tuna were puking them by the boatload." |