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BIG PETE'S SALMON November 6th, 2009
Big Pete’s Salmon by Jamie Maw
When we were young, my brothers and me, we passed our summers on
We thought about fish a great deal. In the mornings we harvested Dungeness crabs and sold them to our neighbours for 25 cents, five for a dollar. In those days, the 1960s, we’d strain to haul the traps over the gunwale of our Davidson dinghy—most days big males would even cling to the outside of the trap for their brief excursion to the pot.
We were humanitarian crabbers. Once back to the dock we would rip off the crab shells, back to front, then split the bodies in half just before boiling—the “no screams” method. Actually, it was an economic decision; ice was at a premium, reserved for our parents’ gin and tonics, and whole crabs claimed too much space in our coolers. We recycled the crab shells over the side of the float, the shiners and pile perch that lived there fattened up on crab guts, just in time to volunteer for bait duty.
In the afternoons we would head back out—my big brother Pete and me, this time with our fishing rods and Lucky Louie lures—completely confident that we’d come back with dinner. Mum might even give us a specification: “The Wallaces are coming and they eat like horses. How about a spring or coho around ten pounds? I’ll make egg sauce.” This was more a matter-of-fact statement than a question. “We’re going fishing, Mum, not grocery shopping,” Pete would say. The only thing left unasked was whether we could possibly catch a dozen eggs for the sauce too.
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Pete and I would take a run down the long side of Whorlcombe Island, on the lee side if the westerly was up, our lines down just inside the tidal rip, then a slow troll back up against the flooding tide. It was the best part of the day, lazy, with the flashers down 30 pulls we would cut the engine back and just take it in, Shasta sodas in hand. The gulls and eagles would be riding off the heat of the islands, wings motionless, searching the tidelines too, watching us watching them. .jpg)
We were the thin, tanned boys of summer, and if you didn’t count swimming in the ocean every day, we didn’t have a proper bath in two months. We messed about in boats constantly: sailing, fixing engines, considering the angle of the sea to the hull, clearing fouled props, exploring. If we had drowned in a storm those summers, heaven would have seemed a letdown.
I can’t remember an evening when we let Mum down, at least until the spectre of girls raised its lovely head. In an absolute pinch, if the wind was blowing, we could always cast for ling cod off the point. They are the least mentioned of coastal fish and delicious eating; we loved the alchemy of watching a ling’s flesh turn from transparent green to opalescent white over the embers.
Gutting a fish quickly and quietly with a freshly whetted knife is a rite of passage for a boy, like docking a boat smoothly, or hatcheting cedar rounds into even splits of kindling, or predicting the weather accurately. Cooking a fish quickly and quietly over an open fire gave us pleasure too: we had caught it, cleaned it and made it taste good. And few enjoy fish as much as those who have been on the sea all day, messing about in boats.
So smaller salmon would naturally find their way outside to the fire. Pete and I would split the fish to the backbone, oil the skin, slather Best Foods’ mayonnaise—cut with the juice of a lemon—on the flesh, and crack some pepper over it. Because we weren’t going to turn it, salmon grilled this way wants a slow fire and a lid of foil so that the cooking is equal parts grilling and roasting. The mayonnaise sealed the flesh and caught the wood smoke.
Bigger springs would be filleted, marinated and grilled (see the recipe below), but the trophy fish, anything over ten pounds or so, and some as much as thirty, found their way into Mum’s wood-burning oven to be baked. The method never varied: a slather of mayonnaise in the cavity, a tip-to-tail course of sliced lemons and wild dill or fennel tops, then all neatly sealed in foil. An hour later she would take it to the platter just warm, place it on a bed of salal and surround it with new potatoes and fresh carrots and peas from the garden. The vegetables would be plated first.
Then time seemed to slow as the salmon was brought to table, its skin peeled back and requests fired in from around the table, “gill, middle, tail!” And like all of life’s profound mysteries, working with an oven that was always either too hot or not enough, Mum’s spring salmon—just cooked through—would be as moist as the sea.
But here is the raison d’tre for all big fish, that they should aspire to this glorious end. Mum would bring the tureen over from the sideboard, stir it with the ladle, and tease us: “Would anyone care for egg sauce?” she would ask.
And so we marked the time of summers, until in late August the setting sun, moving farther away each night, would finally set between the two Popham islands—it might light a boil of late-run herring through the narrow passage—and the cooling nights reminded us of that school was near.
None of us dared mention it because certain miseries are best left unsaid. And because boys who mess about in boats all day should know no time, no time at all: Just the smell of the ocean, the cut of the wind, the angle of their hull as it takes the sea, and that the only thing that can hurt them here is themselves.
