Read Online The Fisher Queen by Sylvia Taylor - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sylvia Taylor
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He reminded me a little of my dad and I had the feeling he understood what I was doing drifting around the bay.
A few helping hands and sympathetic suggestions determined the engine alternator was the culprit this time, which meant another run down the channel to Hardy to get it fixed. With luck we would be fishing again in a couple of days. In the meantime I knew to lay low and keep myself occupied.
Un-Dressing Salmon
How do you dress a salmon? In fishnet stockings, of course.
Dressing a salmon is kind of a misnomer. Getting dressed usually means you add something to somethingâclothes to a person or sauce to a salad or stuffing to a turkey. But when it comes to salmon, you take things away: all their guts and gills.
With trolled salmon, itâs not so much a disembowelling as it is a surgery. It is performed with as much skill and precision as a tossing deck will allow, because one false move costs you, literally. Any mark or cut or incorrect technique will downgrade the fish and youâll get paid a lot less for it. And when youâre talking large red springs, the smileys, youâre talking big loss. Not that we got much for our fish. By the time consumers buy it at the supermarket, everybody has taken their cut, so to speak.
Trolled salmon is the only fresh fish that is dressed before itâs sold. They are caught on individual hooks, treated very gently and hygienically and preserved carefully in crushed ice âtil sold at a fish camp. Only second-grade fish are frozen, as the meat gets mushier when thawed.
Gillnet and seine boats catch their fish by net, and by the time the fish are dragged in and dumped on deck or in the hold, the fish are pretty beaten up by their own frantic thrashing and being dragged through water en masse, mashed together and thrown around. Those poor carcasses go to the canning market, and, in worst case, become fertilizer or pet food.
The minute a troll-caught fish is pulled into the boat, itâs dropped into wooden bins in front of the cockpit in the stern where you stand to pull in the gear. Hold the thrashing tail and hit the fish hard with a gaff or club, hopefully just once, where its neck would be if it had one. It is merciful and necessary, especially if itâs a big spring. They are very strong and can create havoc, flinging other fish, gear and sometimes themselves in all directions, including overboard.
Unless thereâs a fish on every hook, which hasnât happened since Christ was a cowboy, wait âtil all the gear has been pulled, then dress the whole works at once. Sometimes itâs a few, sometimes itâs none.
After it is definitely dead (some people dress them when theyâre still slightly twitchyâa foolish and barbaric practice that wracks up some very nasty karma and results in lots of dressing injuries), prop the fish on its back in the four-foot V-shaped metal or wooden trough with the tail pointing toward your knife hand.Then the surgery begins.
Holding the head steady, with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand in the gills, insert the tip of the long, narrow, exceedingly sharp dressing-knife blade in the anus and make a smooth straight cut up to the throat, if it had one, stopping about an inch before the V-shaped patch where the bottom of the gills meets the throat. Reaching into the throat, cut away the membrane holding the entire gut ensemble.
If itâs done right, you can grab the top of the membrane and pull out the whole business like opening a zipper and pitch it into a bucket. Pitching it overboard often costs you the dressing knife if you lose your grip. Undoubtedly there are a million pounds of stainless steel blades lying on the bottom of the ocean.
Inspect and dissect the internal organs later for personal interest or to see what goodies the fish have been eating and try to match the gear accordingly. Hours of scientific fun.
Next, cut the large blood vessel running along the spinal column and
A few helping hands and sympathetic suggestions determined the engine alternator was the culprit this time, which meant another run down the channel to Hardy to get it fixed. With luck we would be fishing again in a couple of days. In the meantime I knew to lay low and keep myself occupied.
Un-Dressing Salmon
How do you dress a salmon? In fishnet stockings, of course.
Dressing a salmon is kind of a misnomer. Getting dressed usually means you add something to somethingâclothes to a person or sauce to a salad or stuffing to a turkey. But when it comes to salmon, you take things away: all their guts and gills.
With trolled salmon, itâs not so much a disembowelling as it is a surgery. It is performed with as much skill and precision as a tossing deck will allow, because one false move costs you, literally. Any mark or cut or incorrect technique will downgrade the fish and youâll get paid a lot less for it. And when youâre talking large red springs, the smileys, youâre talking big loss. Not that we got much for our fish. By the time consumers buy it at the supermarket, everybody has taken their cut, so to speak.
Trolled salmon is the only fresh fish that is dressed before itâs sold. They are caught on individual hooks, treated very gently and hygienically and preserved carefully in crushed ice âtil sold at a fish camp. Only second-grade fish are frozen, as the meat gets mushier when thawed.
Gillnet and seine boats catch their fish by net, and by the time the fish are dragged in and dumped on deck or in the hold, the fish are pretty beaten up by their own frantic thrashing and being dragged through water en masse, mashed together and thrown around. Those poor carcasses go to the canning market, and, in worst case, become fertilizer or pet food.
The minute a troll-caught fish is pulled into the boat, itâs dropped into wooden bins in front of the cockpit in the stern where you stand to pull in the gear. Hold the thrashing tail and hit the fish hard with a gaff or club, hopefully just once, where its neck would be if it had one. It is merciful and necessary, especially if itâs a big spring. They are very strong and can create havoc, flinging other fish, gear and sometimes themselves in all directions, including overboard.
Unless thereâs a fish on every hook, which hasnât happened since Christ was a cowboy, wait âtil all the gear has been pulled, then dress the whole works at once. Sometimes itâs a few, sometimes itâs none.
After it is definitely dead (some people dress them when theyâre still slightly twitchyâa foolish and barbaric practice that wracks up some very nasty karma and results in lots of dressing injuries), prop the fish on its back in the four-foot V-shaped metal or wooden trough with the tail pointing toward your knife hand.Then the surgery begins.
Holding the head steady, with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand in the gills, insert the tip of the long, narrow, exceedingly sharp dressing-knife blade in the anus and make a smooth straight cut up to the throat, if it had one, stopping about an inch before the V-shaped patch where the bottom of the gills meets the throat. Reaching into the throat, cut away the membrane holding the entire gut ensemble.
If itâs done right, you can grab the top of the membrane and pull out the whole business like opening a zipper and pitch it into a bucket. Pitching it overboard often costs you the dressing knife if you lose your grip. Undoubtedly there are a million pounds of stainless steel blades lying on the bottom of the ocean.
Inspect and dissect the internal organs later for personal interest or to see what goodies the fish have been eating and try to match the gear accordingly. Hours of scientific fun.
Next, cut the large blood vessel running along the spinal column and
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