Thursday, May 8, 2003

Last week's health warnings at the beaches and coves along the Mendocino Coast came too late for me. I went diving last week for abalone, and I should have known better because of all the runoff from the earlier rains. But it was such a fine day, and you don't get many greasy calm days on the coast, and I wanted to paddle around.

I couldn't find any legal abalone in Russian Gulch because the visibility was 4 inches and I'm nearsighted and short of breath and the tide was high. I did see plenty of small abalone. I paddled over to the south side of the cove and all of a sudden the water tasted fresh. Bad news.

Later that night I had a brief but intense case of the Hershey Squirts, as we used to call the runs in Philly. Any of you other divers have intestinal stress recently, or was it just me?

It's that kind of experience that makes anglers and divers proponents of water quality in Northern California. We are on the water and physically know the problems.

As of this writing the notice about elevated bacterial levels at Virgin Creek, Caspar, and Big River had been removed, while new ones have gone up at Van Damme and Navarro beaches. The County's Division of Environmental Health started water sampling on January 1st. Divers might want to think about staying away from sources of runoff until these last rainstorms of the season peter out.

"Ardie Dennen caught 200 fine trout up on Ten Mile River on Sunday. They were all right." 100 years ago, Sunday, April 26th, 1903. Fort Bragg Advocate-News last week. Those were probably wild steelhead smolts.

I missed last weekend's workshop to "awaken to the living indigenous spirit of this space" and also my opportunity to "feed the great Holy Female that is the Ocean" at the Caspar Community Center. Anybody got a report? I was wondering if the great Holy Female and I could go Dutch next time, because I've been feeding her a lot of bait recently and not catching any salmon. I know, I know: my consciousness is out of spec and my spiritual autopilot needs recalibration.

I have a friend who always tosses a penny and a dime into the ocean in appeasement of the Fish Gods. I laughed at him until one time he did it and instantly had a fish on. That's why I call him Mr. Lucky. There's all kinds of fishing superstitions. Never bring a banana on board. White decks boots are for sailors, not fishermen.

As my friend Marilyn Bacon may remember, a desert rat named Joe Blankenship down in Tucson Arizona told us about using metal filings in the ocean to feed plankton blooms, and revitalizing dead areas of the ocean. It turns out Scripps Oceanic Institute did a successful study of this technique. Joe mined the iron particles from his desert mining claim. I've got a bucket full of the stuff. It's all natural. Should I file an Environmental Impact Report or just go ahead and sprinkle?

AB 1354 - the skids are greased for another commercial trawler buyback program.

Salmon fishing continues to be excellent but not WFO (an Internet acronym for "wide fucking open.") One day is hot the next cold. Still, the fishing is averaging better than a fish per rod.

I've never seen so many commercial boats out there after salmon in my twenty years of fishing this coast. Talk about "latent fishing capacity" - it's a zoo out there. Most boats were concentrated around the 60 fathom line straight out from the Noyo buoy. Each market boat may land 150 salmon a day.

Charlie Eby writes: "Limpets are those conical shaped mollusks found on rocks in the same waters where abalone are found but are seldom over one inch in diameter. Not many people know that they are very tasty and picking them is not subject to seasons, nor size though the bag limit is 35. Picking them isn't dependent on minus tides but it's prudent to pick only those which are under water most of the time.

There are 2 varieties I've found along the Ca. coast--one has a smooth shell and the other has striations from the tip of the shell all the way down but both are similar in taste.

"As for preparation to eat, my friend Sus Kato who is from Hawaii, picks them off the rocks, spoons them out of their shell and without further ado, down the hatch!. He prefers them this way but if he has any extra, sprinkles a little salt before sealing them in a plastic bag prior to refrigeration.

"Mom used to broil them, and to prevent them from tipping over due to their conical form, put a layer of salt in a shallow cookie pan and pushed the cone down--this kept the foot side up and retained the juices.

"Before placing them in the pan, she'd add a bit of butter and seasonings like Worcester and a little garlic--the thing is to enhance the delicate flavor, not mask it with high powered seasonings.

Broiling took just a very short time and when done, served on the same cookie pan.

"Toothpicks skewered the meat out and picking a shell out of its salt bed and drinking the juices might not have been Emily Post but it sure tasted good! By the way, they needn't be cleaned--heck, the 'guts and feathers' are where all the flavor is."

Sounds pretty tasty Charlie, I'll give it a try.