Something Positive

Inspired by a little red fish.

I like it so well when it’s the full moon here. Night diving is perfect in the light of a full moon. It filters down through the water and illuminates the shadows. Lobsters don't come out during this time, they prefer darker nights. Its odd how lobsters and eels always hang around together, I suppose they must like the same kind of housing. Ever catch an eel? They practically tie themselves in knots squirming on dry land but cant get anywhere. I've seen them snap there jaws so hard it took a chink out of a steel blade. They're good to eat but a little greasy. Lobster is better but you have to cook them live to taste just right. Of course if they are dead before you get home you can slice them in half and fry them. But you cant freeze a dead lobster, they taste bad. Its odd on a lobster trap how if you wire a hunk of zinc to the bottom all the corrosion gathers on it instead of the trap. Low tides and small waves are best for lobster traps, you can get them in real close to shore. Of course you have to count the waves to do this and time it just right. Lobsters like to eat limets, the little oval shell that sticks to the rocks. Of course they like abalone best, but its to much of a temptation to eat it yourself. It takes about an hour to gather a gallon of limpets. It takes about two gallons of limpets to bait about 20 traps. With crabs its a lot easier. Of course their traps have to be put on a sand bottom. They really like fish guts and heads. When all else fails either lobsters or crabs will eat canned sardines in tomato sauce. All you have to do is poke holes in the cans and wire them in the trap. Cabazones are a great fish. They hang out near the rocks. There meat is blue till you cook it. They have no scales but if they poke you it stings. They make really good eating but not as good as garabaldi, the gold fish of the sea. California's state fish. Seems a shame to eat one almost, they are so beautiful. Cabazones are the ugliest fish I have seen, except for a dog shark. Cook them and they turn to mush, animals won't even eat. But the tastiest fish is manta rays. The wings off of them is better than lobster. Sheephead, half black and half red with their huge buck teeth for eating shells are a good catch because there is a lot of meat but it lacks flavor. And of course the fish from sand bottoms is always a little blander and softer. Like halibut and sea perch. But its nice to fish for them because you can stand in the surf. Then too you have a chance of getting a tiger shark or a skate. But halibut since they live on the bottom and eat trash have those long worms in their meat always. Now if you have a gill net out you can catch all kinds of things. Thresher sharks, sea bass, ling cod, cabrillo and tunas. But tunas are good to catch with a pole from a skiff, it goes fast. The scariest thing to bring up in a small wooden boat is a shark. They're hard to kill in a crowded space. Drop lines work good for rock cods and corvina. Its hard to keep the seals away from this though, unless you clang rocks together under the water, this hurts their ears. A good way to get what you want and take your time is to use a hookah. A line hooked to an air pump on land, but you have to remember to put mineral oil in it so you don't get petroleum in your lungs. Good way to look for abalone too. The red abalone sell the best, mild and soft. The blacks ones which are in closer are tough and chewy with a strong flavor. I like these best. Certain abalone guts are really good to eat too, the ones that have ate the right sea weed. Certain crabs to if when you pull them out of the cooker and turn them on there backs to open them will have a hot soup inside them that goes great with lime and hot sauce. Just like sea urchins, just take them by there purple spines and crack them open on the spot, a little lime juice cooks them and you have an instant snack. The orange color of their insides is such an odd shade. Urchins are worth a lot of money and well worth collecting. The deeper the water the bigger they get. You can store them in cages in the ocean for days and feed them till they are full so you get more money. The Japanese buy them. They fly them there. Japanese also buy the abalones they are raising commercially now too. But my all time favorite is just plain blue shark. I never get tired of it. Besides I like to collect their jaws. Now this talk of fish could just go on forever. I remember seeing a dammed pond from an underground spring out in the middle of high desert and it was brimming full of gold fish big enough to eat. Never figured how those fish got there. The Indians sure liked them. But like I said the subject of fish is never ending.