Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Hit and run by a Sitka Deer....

Spike
Thanks for the good time and the fishing and the general hospitality!
art

Bob
I am tickled the trick worked... I hope the knee continues to stay pain-free.

Was good to meet you and the Bullet man!
art

Hence the hat brim pulled low down over your eyes... .

Sounds like a good trip...

DN

Daryl
I was so proud of my heart-on-my-forehead I went for a second coat after the first washed off. No funny looks at check-in either... Well, no stranger than usual...
art

Nice fish.

Here in SW Oregon (3 hours South of Portland) The Umpqua is also full of fish, and it kills me that we aren't moved in yet and I just don't have the time to fish this winter.

Yes, from what I saw Art is quite a conservationist, often releasing the fish before he even touches it...... quite often in fact...

OK, lets hear the story.

Terry
The little steelhead was taken completely to hand and the option was completely mine on the release... Huge difference between a narrow gape size 20 dry fly hook and a double rigged hunk o' bait when it comes to long-range releases! Do not confuse the picture of the real steelhead and the one I released... There was considerable difference...

I also performed a little fillet and release on some large scale suckers just to prove blood-letting was not a sin to me...
art

Laffin'! I am just relieved that you were able to re-acquire your previous hook-set in time to stick some fish up there.

Yet another example of work interfering with my quality of life....

How do you cook those sucker filets?

Hot and fast!

'Fillet and release', eh? I like that! One time a friend on board wanted to keep a mess of bluefish to experiment with in the kitchen. One fish he had filleted a side off managed to flip himself over the gunnel. We watched for a few minutes as the damned thing appeared to get back to eating in the slick. If bluefish weighed 200 lbs and could walk, they'd rule the earth.

Great pics, and good jobbie, Art!

L

Actually the fillet and release line came from KKalaska in reference to skates where we whack off the wings and toss them back (killed) just to keep the whip and the mess off the deck. Better eating than most any other fish, too.

What many folks don't realize is that in Great Britain, most of the fish n' chips that they happily eat is in fact, skate. I've eaten floured and fried 'wings', and they are good. That said, we toss ours back. Bass is better.

I figured Spike was ragging ya.

Nope. I'm not sure about whether it is true or not, but my brother years ago in HS worked at a fishmonger's place, and was told that some unscrupulous other fish sellers would sometimes take an apple corer and punch out 'scallops' from skate wings, and mix them in with the genuine scallops. He was also told that no one ever knew anyone that caught on. As far as skates and popular eats, see below.

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/bestbites/302.html

Skate Goes From Trash Fish to Treasure
Share | Print By Todd Kliman , Cynthia Hacinli , Ann Limpert



If monkfish�an unlovely creature whose veiny, purplish flesh turns off many shoppers�could find favor among chefs, you had to figure it was only a matter of time before skate, another �trash fish,� would be rediscovered.

If anything, skate suffers from an even worse image problem. Resembling a giant batwing, it takes on a distressing aroma of ammonia after being out of water for a couple of days.

On the other hand, its flaky white, sweet meat with long, separated strands that run along the line of the bone and make it easy to eat. And while prices continue to go up for other white flaky meats such as flounder and trout, skate is cheap��one of the few fish,� says Bob Kinkead of DC�s Kinkead�s, �a chef can actually make some money on.�

That makes it a hot commodity among chefs who can seek out the fresh product on the market and try to convince diners that skate is worth gambling on.

�It�s just a matter of getting people to make the leap from �Ooh, it�s a stingray� to �Ah, it�s a really flaky, sweet fish,� � says Kinkead, whose waitstaff appears to be doing just that. Five years ago, a good night for skate was ten orders. These days, his rendition of pan-fried skate with parsley sauce and gnocchi sells three times that many.

Chef RJ Cooper of Vidalia concedes that skate suffers from image problems but says it�s one of the few ingredients that sets his mind racing. �There�s no limit,� he says, �to what you can do with skate.�

Few fishes thrive in so many different contexts. At Montmartre on Capitol Hill, skate undergoes as many dress-ups as Diana Ross in concert: It�s napped with saffron sauce or capers or balsamic sauce. Sometimes it�s saut�ed and paired with bok choy or mashed potatoes.

Vikram Garg of IndeBleu glazed it with tamarind and set it next to a fenugreek-pumpkin hash for Thanksgiving. Oyamel also tapped it for holiday duty, frying it up and topping it with guacamole and salsa for its Day of Kings menu in January.

Most chefs favor simpler preparations, the better to enjoy the fish�s delicacy. Oceanaire leaves it unadorned, grilling it with olive oil and serving it with an arugula salad.

Vidalia�s Cooper is rotating two preparations: saut�eing it in a brown butter sauce with capers and lemon for an entr�e and serving a smaller appetizer portion with a composed salad of local vegetables that he tops with a Creole mustard vinagrette. At Restaurant Kolumbia, Jamie Stachowski takes a similar tack, pan-frying and seasoning it with capers and lemon juice. That�s also the preferred method of Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve, who plans to put skate on the menu at his forthcoming Eamonn�s, a fish �n� chips joint.

Trash fish? As long as it�s fresh, these days it�s a treasure fish.

Also, see http://www.starvinmarvinsseafoods.com/skate-wings.htm

If I remember right about 20 or 25 years ago there was quite a market for dog fish as they sure did job on the local dog fish population here at the mouth of Puget Sound and the Sraights of Juan de Fuca. It was said they were shipping them to England for Britons version of Fish N' Chips.

That is true as well. Spiny dogfish. Here, they are commercially off-limits due to Federal proclamation, and said to be in trouble, population wise. I wish I could take some of those folks that made that determination out a few times. There are doggies so thick here that you sometimes can't even get your bait in the water more than 10 seconds before getting eaten. Upon reeling the bastard up, often several *dozen* will follow the hooked one up. Looking on a finder, the bottom is literally covered with them, for miles. As a result, many bottom fish (cod, pollock, haddock, hake) have disappeared from grounds they've been for centuris. F'in feds.

L

I have always wondered about the cookie cutter thing with skate. The muscles are tapered cords that run from spine to wingtip and are easily seperated from the fatty matrix. I pull them out individually and chop them into scallop-length pieces and from there anything works. I much prefer them to halibut...

Management of marine fishes has simply been either the biggest oxymoron or the most ridiculous joke in every ocean, everywhere...
art