The Indelible Taste of a Fish Lost

"The Longest Silence" is one of my favorite books.  The writing is fantastic, reminding me of Schweibert and Haig-Brown in it's practical love of fish, the places they live and people who they meet while chasing them.  I especially though love his months long description of trying to catch a permit, one of the hardest to catch fish on a fly.

I read that section again and again sometimes because it reminds me of learning to fish.  For whatever reason I seem to find the hardest way to figure it out.  Fly fishing was like that, salmon were like that, steelhead were like that and now Puget Sound is like that.  What's weird is that I can remember the first one of those fish hooked and lost as easily as if it was yesterday.

My first big fish on a fly was on the little Deschutes where I clambered down a steep bank into a slowly deepening run with overhanging alders.  I roll cast a Clouser Minnow into the current and let it roll along and then pull up tight and stripped it back.  I had about decided to leave the run and had just let the fly dangle in the current when a big Cutthroat took it.  My line ran off of my little reel and the fish jumped twice and was gone with my fly.  I can still remember the sun shining on the fly right before that trout decided to kill it.

My first hooked steelhead on a fly was in a very very long run of cobblestone.  I had recently started tying spey flies and had landed a dandy 19 inch Cutthroat on a Lady Caroline and had switched to a homemade contraption of copper colored dubbing and a duck flank.  Steelhead fishing makes your casting better over time and I remember casting about 45 degrees downstream and thinking that was a nice cast.  Bam, Tug, Tug and it was gone faster than it took me typing those words.

I've been trying to figure out Puget Sound since I got my boat.  I've fished for Kings off of Lilliwaup and Bald Point, Chambers Creek and everywhere else I could think of.  I've caught a few Chum and Pinks so I know how to pick them up at times but the big Kings keep eluding me.  This morning I went out, armed with some new knowledge from a friend of mine and started fishing not long after first light.

I was trolling in shallow water with a cut plug herring and a 4 oz weight.  I don't have a fish finder so I had to check for bottom by holding the rod every now and then to feel for bounces.  I had just done than and put the rod back in it's holder when it started bouncing back and forth like mad.  I killed the motor and got the rod out of the holder and set the hook in time to see my line taking off of the reel and the fish splash on the surface.  I started playing it in and then reached for the net to make sure it was handy.  Right then the fish ran straight for the boat and by the time I reeled up tight, no fish was there.

Like those other two fish, I will never forget this.  The astonishment at seeing the rod bounce after getting it in the rod holder and the gutting disappointment when I reeled up to a 4 oz weight with no fish.  The quiet hum of my trolling reel when it's letting line out and the solid head shaking weight of a big king.

The Manly Art of Preserving Fish Eggs

It's not often, or actually ever, that I do much preserving (because this is Billy and not Chelle writing this post, she also writes more than me) but I put my hand to it today. Chelle was kind enough to post the brace of Chinook that I caught yesterday. I was free drifting eggs to catch them, fish roe and they cost me $11.00 for a small plastic container. I've only had some luck with commercial eggs and almost everyone else on the river are using ones that they have cured themselves so noting that I was lucky enough to have caught two hens I set to the task today.

I cured eggs once before from some pink salmon that Chelle and I caught in the salt at Redondo back in 2009. I used a commercial "shaker cure", basically a large plastic parmesan cheese container that was chock full of who knows what but the instructions have you shake it on the eggs and then let them drain. The hot pink dye sticks to everything and is very very strong so the materials you use get used once. I went downstairs to find my shaker cure and it was a solid block of crumbly rock. I resigned myself to going out to buy more until Chelle mentioned that we had borax, and we do, and I remembered that in the days of yore nobody used "shaker" cures.

So off to the interweb I went and found a good bunch of articles. There were those espousing a bed of Borax until the eggs became firmer, those that espoused using a dry mixture of salt, sugar, borax and dyes and even others that used scents like shrimp oil. But the old school cures that I found made a brine from sugar, salt and borax that was brought to a boil before soaking the eggs for about 20 minutes and straining. I like old school so I ran with that. The steps are pictorially shown below.....

First, you butterfly them without cutting the membrane that holds the skeins together and lay them out to dry....

These are the eggs from two King hens, a 9lber and a 12 lber.... Next you prepare a solution of 2 quarts water, 2 cups sugar, 2 cups non-iodized salt and two cups of 20 mule team borax...

After dissolving all of the solids and bringing the whole thing to a boil you take it off the heat and wait patiently for it to come back down to room temperature. After that you place the eggs, cut into smaller clusters, membrane down in the water. They will float. Soak for 18 minutes making sure to stop and "dunk" the eggs three times as you go.

The eggs will firm up (which is what you want so that they stay on a hook long enough to catch fish). After that you remove them from the brine and place in a strainer waiting for a majority of the brine and water to drip off of the eggs....

Then you take them out of the strainer and put them back out on clean paper towels and pat them dry....

Finally, take a one gallon ziplock, add about 1/2 cup of Borax to it and place the egg clusters in then bag. Close securely and "shake and bake" to coat them liberally with the borax. Squeeze all of the air out and place in the fridge for 12 - 24 hours. The borax in the bag will finish the job. Then you can freeze them (if you use a good seal-a-meal the eggs can last up to 2 years).

Finished product, ready for the fridge....

And there you have it... No need for a "shaker cure". Just a simple old school brining that could serve as the basis for fancier cures with different proportions of salt, sugar and other scents added if needed. Best of all, all of these ingredients were in the house saving me the cost of a commercial cure AND I have half a gallon of eggs! That's at least $35 worth of bait at the sportsman's store in town.

Thank you Chelle! Both for the day of fishing and for inspiring me!

Billy Lee