The Monkeyface News

Full Immersion

                     Pile perch sashimi.  That's right.  I ate this.  And lo: it was great.

I went fishing for pogies today.  Only problem: there wasn't any crowd. Seriously, I'm getting to the point where I fish better with people watching.  

I wonder if this is a dilemma that porn stars are familiar with?

 

                                                      "...better with people watching."

 

Anyway, I got two hawg pogies.  Love the way pogies come out of the water all weirdly tan and blue. And pile perch. What fun pulling in pile perch all day.  Fahgettabout pogies, pile perch are the 747s of the Embiotocidae.  Plain and simple.  What fun!

Okay, no secrets here.  So now I'm commercial surfperch fishing.  No great success as yet, but still, catching 20 surf perch in one day is a wonderful thing to do.  And finally... a use for them!  Brought in a sample load of pogies and pilies to our sustainable fishmonger par excellence Kenny B.  And had them cooked up four different ways:  grilled, pan roasted, deep fried and raw. (Yes my people. I have now eaten raw pile perch--we are talking full immersion at this point).

 

                                              Full immersion: the author eating pile perch sashimi

 

It helps to have a willing restaurant/receiver and some adventurous restauranteurs at my disposal. Having presented to the folks at Fish the essential dilemma of surf perch: what to do about the mooshiness?  We learned several things:

1:  Don't eat them fresh (unless you're doing sashimi).  2 days in the refrigerator does wonders for a surf perch. I'm just saying.

2:  Pile perch makes for some damned good sashimi.  Do you want to eat this more than once a month? No.  But there's no denying it.  Four fish-obsessed men sitting around a table objectively agreed that pile perch was not just good as sashimi... it was great.  Seriously.  Three top of the line Bay Area chefs can't be wrong.

                                                        Before

 

 

                                                            After

3. If cooking... pan-roasted works better than frying or grilling.

Why did it take me so long to realize all this?  Honestly I've always been kinda squeemish about eating bay perch.  But I mean at this point, I've eaten raw monkeyface eel and leopard shark ceviche so what the hell.  Might as well go for full immersion.  

(A note to Mike Chinn:  Mike there's no need to point out the OEHHA report on surf perch to me.  I know all about poly aeromatic hydrocarbons and whatnot... this goes to anyone else who wants edu-ma-cate me on the advisability of eating surf perch out of SF Bay.  In short, I fall back on the "something's gotta kill ya," argument.  And it's true you know).

 

Further Reflections On An Unorthodox Life

 

Ummm... to all ye eelmen out there. Don't care how great you guys think you are.  This was a friggin hawg. 7.2 pounds.  Biggest eel I've ever caught.  And I caught it with 20 people watching me, so I figure that adds an extra pound.  Relax people... of course, I threw it back. Looked like a gravid female so why kill it?  Anyway, at this point, I'm open to someone else succeeding me.  I've held the crown long enough, no reason to be greedy.  Anyway it was lip hooked--and barely lip hooked at that--so I'm sure it lived.  

                                               The small eel weighed 1.8 pounds

 

10 years as an actor in NY.  15 years as a (what was I really?) underground musician in San Francisco. 5,000 fucking hours on stage and what do I have to show for it?  A smattering of people who have heard of my band. 623 people who saw me in some play or other.  And now... one year since I gave up the idea that I was a performer I've got a thousand people on my mailing list, sold out tours till April.  A TV show hangin' like 50 pounds of rock crabs in a box at the dock and a possible book deal in the works. What the hell is going on? Absolutely no strategy for this and look...  I will ride the monkeyface eel to world renown. Ha!

And when the day for my demise at last arrives... the entire biomass of monkeyface eels will rise as one and dance a slimy dance to celebrate my passing.  

But until then...

 

Really?

 

 

What else?  Nothing for now.  Heading out for nighties tomorrow.  Not too promising with all this heavy surf.  But what can I say?  This is what I tend to do when the quarter moons arrive at the end of Feb.  

What the hell am I listening to right now?

1500 albums of toothless old men singing the blues and strumming guitars in my collection.  Blind Willie Johnson to Harry Parch to Nuzrat to Ivo Paposav to obscure mento and son jarocho cds and all I want to listen to lately is this chubby, 20 year old, pop diva from Britain, who sings ridiculous songs of adolescent heart break and betrayal.  What has become of me?

                                           Harry Partch, Nusrat and... Adele?  What has become of me?

Okay... when Adele rears her wonderfully zaftig visage on this blog it's time to call it quits. Anyway, I gotta start working on my March update.  Something I look forward to with great relish.    

From deep in the heart of the beast... this is Lombard of the Intertidal, signing out.

Kirk-out

 

 

 

 

The Big Event

 

And so it came to pass... that the dream became a reality.  I had my night.  I got the peeps to see that you don't have to eat the same seafood everyone else is eating.  You don't have to drag the oceans with nets, you don't have to travel miles offshore, you don't have to fish for species that are getting slammed by every other commercial fisherman in California.  You can actually go down to the local pier/beach/tide-pool and catch things worthy of a gourmet meal.  Lucky for me I found La Trappe, and it's owner, Mike. I've been trying to make this concept happen for over a year, actually two years.  But it keeps falling through (I take full responsibility for this).

But Mike decided to make it two things: affordable and fun.  And having it coincide with beer week wasn't a bad idea either! (A happy marrying of two of my favorite things: fish and beer).  Anyway affordable and fun was exactly what it turned out to be!

 

Goddess of sustainability Bea Johnson gets up close and personal with Cebidichthys violaceus. Please check out this link to see the awesome stuff Bea and hubby Scott are doing in Marin:  Zero Waste.  {Beyond just being very funny, I think this photo illustrates the kind of wild energy and exuberance that was going on Tuesday night).

 

It also didn't hurt to have a hard working wait staff, and an awesomely talented kitchen that treated the surf smelt, manilla clam, rock crab and monkeyface eel with profound delicacy and playfulness.  I mean seriously. It was a dream come true to see all those items on a local menu, but to see them honored with such skill and originality almost turned me into a weeping mass of snot and tears.

 

                                        The author presents the eel

Anyway, here's the menu:

 

                                                                                                                                 The menu for the big event 02/14/12

 

Not sure if anyone out there has ever had to catch fish for a big event but I will say this:  it ends up putting a lot of pressure on a fisherman.  I mean at this point I'm pretty good at monkeyface eels... but 20 in one day... that was a serious challenge.  Luckily I have Mikey D., to follow me into all my crazy misadventures.

 

But unluckily for both of us the weather turned foul the day before the event and we were forced to endure some nasty stuff out there (see movie at the bottom of this post).  This is why it's a lot safer for a small boat fisherman never to make promises.  The ocean doesn't give a hot damn about anybody's sustainable fish dinner.  

I'm not sure I really gave Mikey D. his props.  But the truth is there wouldn't have been any dinner without Mikey.  He busted his ass for me and I am forever indebted.

And another person I need to thank is Kenny B., our beloved fishmonger and lender of "the boat." Without his continued generosity we'd be dead in the water.

There were a lot of cool things that happened that night but for me, the eel skinning and smelt de-boning demonstrations were tops.

                        The lovely "Katie" debones her first smelt

 

If "the lovely Katie" ever reads this post, I want to offer my apologies. "Knead" was the wrong word.  You want to simply press the spine into the palm of your hand. Kneading, done by someone who's actually kneaded bread, (unlike me), will result in a mooshed smelt.

Another lovely attendee learns some basics of fish preparation: skinning the eel.  Note the curious red mark on face of instructor.

 

I dunno, I'm sure there's some disgruntled old fisherman or fishmonger out there who scoffs at all this. Making a big deal about twenty eels and 70 pounds of rock crabs.  Oh well, that's fine with me.  I'm perfectly happy being the guy who makes a big deal about small quantities of under appreciated fish. And anyway, I'd like to see any other fisherman on the planet stand up in front of packed house and sing Molly Malone without getting thrown out on his face.

 

 

And so now I go to bed feeling pretty damned good about life.  Happy visions still dancing across the inner vault of my eel-obsessed brain. Although it doesn't make sense outside the context of the event, I thought I'd include the following video (see below) which I showed at the beginning of the night.  (Yes, several years ago I used Henry Thomas' Fishing Blues in a video about drain fishing, but I figured for my own event it was excusable to use it again).

                        Molly Malone statue, Dublin

 

Looks like we're going to do one of these events for every season... ooh think about what wonders await us in April! July! October!

Anyway, thanks to everyone who attended. It was a truly wonderful night.  And every single person contributed to it.  

From deep in my happy place this is Lombard of the Intertidal... signing out.

 

 

Pennies From Heaven

 

The rain as it appeared outside the author's window at 6:47 Tuesday, Feb 7th

5:30AM and it's raining.  Drip drop drip.  Not the torrential downpour predicted, but rain nonetheless. Huzzah!  Sturgeon milling about in the bay.  Salmonids suddenly perking up.  The last herring getting squirrelly again.  And me sitting here with cup o' joe and a rare sense of optimism.

 

  "... with cup o' joe and a rare sense of optimism."

 

But even so... wow, what a miserable winter rain-wise.  Just spent ten minutes looking at my New Year's resolutions... which have always been more of a January to-do list than anything else.  Anyway, I was thinking about it and it dawned on me that I ought to write up my New Years fishing resolutions.

Recreational:

1.  Get off butt and catch a friggin white seabass!

2.  Get off butt and spend more time halibut fishing in the bay!

3.  Make a trip to Jerry's secret lair of goliath clams

4.  Master extracting gonads from purple urchins

5.  Make a new A-frame net for S. starski season... and overhaul old nets.

 

 

Commercial:

1.  Get off butt and catch a friggin white seabass!

2.  Get off butt and spend more time halibut fishing in the bay

3.  Hook and line sand dabbery.  Can it be done inside 3 miles?

4.  Coon striped shrimp--in earnest.  What could be done with 200 traps?

5.  Attend Fish and Game Commission meeting to propose regulatory changes to the herring fishery.

6.  Continue to develop the market for underutilized species.  Rock crab?  Jacksmelt anyone? Yellowfin gobies?

 

Seriously tho.  The Japanese are way into this species.  They have party boats for them and what not.  I even found the following slogan from the annals of Japanese fishing lore:

 

 ‘A saltwater fisherman’s life begins with goby fishing, and ends with goby fishing’

 

And of course, the Japanese aren't the only ones:  Remember this picture from several thanksgivings ago?

 

                                                                Not bullheads, gobies.

I mean, you want to talk sustainability?  Let's reduce the population of invasive gobies through commercial fishing.  Who's in?

Funny, I totally forgot about these old posts (see below if you want more goby-hood).

Thanksgiving Gobies

Byczki Cigarettes and Tales of Old Odessa

Gotta go poke the shores.

--Kirk out