Fishing and Feasting with Family

As I write this, my father and brother are in the air headed back East. They were here to celebrate Dad’s 75th birthday, piggybacked on Father’s Day. Naturally, we went fishing.

My mum was here a few months ago, making her first visit to our house here in Northern California. Likewise, we went fishing.

A love of fish binds our far-flung, split-up and spread-out family. Mum is a native of seaside town of Ipswich, Massachusetts; Dad was in the Navy. My stepfather Frank spent a fair bit of his leisure time fishing off the Jersey Shore. My brother fishes, as do two of my three sisters; the other sister just likes eating them. Some of my fondest early memories are of catching fish, and I will never forget the colossal flounder fry Mum would make after we’d hammered ‘em off Point Pleasant aboard the Norma K III. Even 30 years later, I still can’t quite stomach tartar sauce.

Almost every time Dad and I get together we fish. A few years ago we shared an epic striped bass fishing trip in the salt marshes of Cape May, New Jersey, that morphed into a striper-bluefish-herring trip that did not end until well after midnight. Somehow we weren’t exhausted once we cleaned the fish and returned home, so we opened a couple beers and sat talking. A couple beers became many. Before we knew it, dawn had broken.

This trip was supposed to be our first big Alaskan trip, but finances have been pretty tight all around. But I know the rhythm of the fishing seasons here and figured we could get on some California halibut in the San Francisco Bay, some shad in the American River, and maybe a striper in either spot.

Dad and brother Fred arrived Wednesday in time for dinner, so I cooked the striped bass I’d caught a month ago with some fresh porcini mushrooms, wine and some of my homemade bacon. (Here is my recipe, if you are so inclined.)

We got up at 3:30 a.m. the next morning and headed to Emeryville, where I’d booked us on the C-Gull. It was packed, even on a Thursday, which was a bit disappointing. We’d decided to push ourselves and go Thursday to beat the Father’s Day weekend crowds. No such luck. But the day was cool and the bay was calm, and we had coffee. Life was good.

Almost as soon as we began fishing, Fred hooked into a big halibut — a really nice one, probably 16-17 pounds. Holly hooked a shorty, then I did, and then things settled down for a bit.

Eventually I had a decent halibut on the line. As I brought it up, my line got tangled with my neighbor’s, which is never good. The fish was well over 10 pounds, and was pretty green: Green fish need to be tired out before landing, or they can break you off. I got the halibut to the surface, and was about to let him head back down for another run when the captain appeared with the net. “Drag him in!” he shouted, dipping the net in the water. I was thinking “no way,” but just then the fish rocketed to the surface, thrashed his head — and bit off the hook. Gone. The captain mumbled something about me being too slow, which got my ears hot: I’ve caught hundreds of flatfish before, and I know how to land them.

I got over it when Dad reeled in a keeper halibut, and then a striped bass. Late in the day Fred caught another halibut, and then the wind blew up and things got sloppy. We all spent the last hour inside the cabin; Holly and I would go fishless.

Normally I’d fish until they dragged me off the deck, but I felt oddly serene about the whole thing: I had been worried that Dad and Fred would not catch fish — when I took Mum out in early spring, we’d gotten skunked — but I honestly didn’t care if I caught anything. This never happens. Just seeing Dad and my brother so happy to be out on the San Francisco Bay, catching fish, seeing the sights — including a century-old fishing schooner — was enough. Maybe I’m growing up. And besides, we’d have some fish for dinner.

And it wasn’t over. Friday night we went shad fishing with John Harrison from Five Rivers Guide Service. I’d hoped Dad and Fred would get a different experience, and I was right. John took his drift boat out, which has no motor — so we could hear the river. What’s more, he took us to a quiet spot downstream from Sunrise Boulevard where no one else was around; to look around us, we could have been fishing in 1850.

The good thing about shad fishing in California is that even on a slow day — which is what we had — we still caught 15-16 fish. We kept a dozen and tossed back the rest. Once again, Fred had the hot hand and started catching first.

I followed up with a few, and Dad finally got the hang of it and began catching as the sun went down.

In the end, we wound up with 15 pounds of halibut fillets, a nice striper and 10 pounds of shad fillets that will soon become smoked shad.

We ate well yesterday. I made a raw porcini salad dressed with a saffron vinaigrette, deep-fried honegiri shad fingers, a shrimp risotto made with stock from the striped bass, a salad of halibut poached in olive oil – and, just for good measure, gadwall duck breasts with a morel sauce.

To wash it down, I pulled out a bottle of 2005 Grillo — a Sicilian white wine — that Dad had made; I’d saved it just for such an occasion.

I can’t think of a better way to end a family visit. Now I need to get Mum back here when the fish are biting, so I can cook her a similar feast. But I’m still skipping the tartar sauce.