Catching the Elusive Herring
Mar 6th, 2011 | By Hank Shaw | Category: Fish, Hunting & Fishing Stories, Recipe | Comments | 19 Comments |
Photo by Hank Shaw
Sitting in a backwater of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, fruitlessly fishing for sturgeon, my friend and guide R.J. casually mentioned that he’d seen herring the last time he’d been fishing on the San Francisco Bay. Herring? Really? My heart jumped.
Hesitantly, I asked if he would take me out fishing for them. Ninety-nine guides out of 100 would have given me the hairy eyeball for wanting to target what is, for most people, bait. Or worse, cat food. But R.J. Waldron isn’t most guides. I was relieved when I saw his expression: Far from put off by the idea, he seemed as psyched as I was to chase this little fish.
We would be pioneers. No one, it seems, ever fishes for Pacific herring with a rod and reel; they’re all caught in big nets by commercial fishermen. We’d be opening a new fishery for recreational anglers. A fishery so untapped you can keep up to 25 pounds of herring per person. Visions of a bonanza drifted through my mind.
I know, I know. Many of you are scratching your heads wondering why I am all hot and bothered about herring. After all, they’re small, oily and bony. Well, so are sardines, which I’ve seen retail for more than $10 a pound. In fact, from an eating standpoint these Pacific herring are essentially winter sardines — with the added bonus of having roe, which is wonderful dusted in flour and fried in bacon fat.
Photo by Hank Shaw
Nutritionally, herring are as much of a spring tonic as are nettles and miner’s lettuce: Filled with healthy omega-3 fatty acids, they are a cure for the winter doldrums. I’ve eaten herring wrapped in grape leaves and grilled, “cooked” in lemon juice like Greek gavros, salted down and eaten like bacon with cornmeal pancakes, pickled, and — my favorite — smeared with mustard, rolled in oats and fried in butter.
How do I know all this, considering I’d never caught a Pacific herring? Well, strictly speaking, I didn’t. But you see, me and herring, we go way back.
I first fell in love with herring in 1997, when I moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia. I soon learned that every spring, a gigantic run of blueback herring storms the rivers of the Chesapeake Bay. The herring run is the official start of spring fishing there, and scores of anglers line the banks of the Rappahannock River to catch them.
Photo by Hank Shaw
It’s glorious fishing. You use no bait, only a series of tiny brass hooks with colored pennants on them, weighted at one end with a half-ounce of lead. Huck the rig as far into the river as you can, and reel it back in, twitching the line as you go. If you are lucky, you will annoy a passing herring enough that he’ll strike the hook. If you are very lucky, you will get two, or even three on the line at once. That is riotous fun! On a good day, I could fill a 5-gallon bucket full of herring.
I had this in mind as R.J. and I motored out into the bay. We were armed with the same lure I’d used in Virginia, a sabiki rig. In no time R.J. spotted a school of herring on his fish finder. We dropped our rigs into the bay and within minutes had hooked a couple of herring.
I reeled my fish in, and was astonished. It was tiny, only about 6 inches long! R.J.’s fish was no bigger. Weird. The bluebacks we caught in Virginia were all about 12-14 inches long. These basically looked like sardines, only flatter and more silvery.
Photo by Hank Shaw
We soon learned that this would be no bonanza. Herring are in the San Francisco Bay to spawn, and they are spending all of their time zooming around looking for eel grass on which to lay their eggs. One second R.J. would spot a school on his fish finder, the next they’d be gone.
What’s worse, these fish were not biting. Not like the bluebacks, and not even like the sardines of summer. I can’t tell you how many times I’d hook a herring, full of hope, only to feel it slip off the line a few seconds later. Frustrating.
Finally, however, we found our spot, a large swath of submerged eel grass up against a sea wall. It was easy to see why we ought to fish there: A thousand gulls and cormorants had congregated around the area, and squadron of gray harbor seals and cinnamon sea lions patrolled the shallows.
Photo by Hank Shaw
At last we were able to pick away at the herring, although it still was nothing like the hootenaney on the Rappahannock back in Virginia. We called it a day with only 26 herring. Not a bad haul considering, but given that these fish were all barely 8 inches long at best, it could have been better. Oh well, we’re still learning.
I did later find out why the fish were so small. It seems herring first enter the San Francisco Bay in November, and that every succeeding wave of herring gets younger and smaller. We were hitting the very end of the spawning run.
There is a side benefit to catching herring so small — the zillions of tiny bones in their fillets would be undetectable when we ate them; calcium without the bother.
Driving home, I decided to eat some herring fresh and to pickle the rest. Herring will not stay fresh, even on ice, for more than 48 hours or so because all that yummy fish oil turns rancid fast. This is why most herring are salted, pickled or smoked. But when you have truly fresh herring, enjoy them.
I filleted 10 of the fattest fish for the evening’s dinner. I knew I had to make herring and oats, a staple of my spring diet in Virginia. The dish is a Scottish classic, one I’d made scores of times a decade ago. I decided on serving another spring essential with it: nettle champ. Champ is mashed potatoes with a green thing mixed in; colcannon is the same thing with green onions added, too. Since my family is Scots-Irish, it seemed appropriate.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
This dish will never appear on the menu at Alinea or the French Laundry. It will not transport you to the astral plane. It’s peasant food. Hearty, filling yet still vibrant. The mustard cuts the richness of the herring and the oats add a wintry feeling, one counteracted by the vivid green of the nettles in the mashed potatoes. I imagine it could be re-imagined as haute cuisine, but not here, and not now. This was simple, good food.
But I am afraid it will be the last herring and oats I will eat until November. I am hugely bummed to have missed most of the herring run, but hey, like I said, we’re still learning the ropes in this fishery. There’s always next year. After all, the herring will be there. It’s not like anyone else is fishing for them.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
SCOTTISH HERRING and OATS
This dish can be done with sardines or other small fish, or you can use this breading for any other fish if you are willing to stray from the original recipe. I bet it also would be good with sand dabs, mackerel, bluefish, spot or croakers, alewives, Great Lakes whitefish… you get the point.
Serves 2
Prep Time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 6 minutes
- 1/2 pound herring fillets
- Salt
- 1/2 cup smooth prepared mustard
- 1/2 cup cream or milk
- 1 1/2 cups oats
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil, butter or lard
Wash the herring fillets and salt them well. Set aside at room temperature for 15 minutes.
Mix the mustard and cream in bowl and submerge the herring in the mixture. Let this stand for at least 10 minutes, and as long as an hour.
Put the oats in a food processor or blender and buzz until mostly broken up. You want some of the oats to be flour, and some to be still recognizable as oats. Put the oats in a large bowl.
Heat the oil or butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Set out some paper towels nearby to allow the finished fish to drain. Dredge the herring in the oat mixture and fry until golden, about 2-3 minutes per side. Drain on the paper towels.
Serve hot with beer and mashed potatoes, champ, colcannon or just simple boiled potatoes.
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I’m thinking that you may need to take up a Cast Net. Could be a fantastic Foraging/Gathering skill to have nonetheless.
Bp
Well hell, lookie there — FIRST!
being scandinavian, it’s always interesting to see others talk about herring. many scandinavians, I think, consider herring ‘our’ food, or even ‘our’ secret, even if that is far from the truth.
how do you pickle them, for instance? I live in denmark, and here it is pickled with too much sugar, whereas in sweden it is pickled with little or no sugar, creating a much more interesting result.
Hey Hank, I love how often you’ve been posting lately. Thanks! Do you follow the Monkeyface News blog at all? Check it out at http://monkeyfacenews.typepad.com. Kirk’s got a lot to say about herring. I can see you guys spending a long, rainy evening by the fireplace talking all things piscatorial.
A local with a cast net, sir.
http://monkeyfacenews.typepad.com/my-blog/page/2/
Good video too, but best watched on Youtube.
B
I have often thought about herring and wondered what the season was. I discovered sardine fishing last summer off the Santa Cruz Pier. Fun fishing and delicious eating, the downside though is losing fish while you hoist your line 20ft up to the pier. I like the sounds of this recipe though, and I’ll have to give it a try next summer when the sardines begin to swarm the bay.
I used to live in Petersburg Ak for several years. Its a fishing community in SE Alaska with a strong Norwegan heritage. We caught LOTS of herring. Mostly for king salmon or halibut bait. They are incredibly abundant there. We caught them just as you described. A set of bare hooks would work, but usually a bit of bright yarn was added. A couple guys could easily catch 50 to 100 in about 20-30 minutes.
In addition to use as bait, both the Norwegans and the native Tlingit had a tradition of eating herring. I tended towards the Norwegan recipes, usually pickled or breaded and fried. Very tasty. And the roe, a huge commercial fishery for the Japanese market, is delicious! Makes me hungry thinking about it.
Interesting post. Thanks. I might have to figure a way to get on the bay and look for some herring next winter. Any idea if they are in other north coast bays, like Humbolt?
On a related note the smelt are starting to bite here in MN!
Hank
Use a net. I went down to the bay during the run and was catching 20lbs with each throw! Was pretty amazing. Here’s a post I did about the run: http://foragesf.com/recipes2/100-lbs-of-herring-in-20-minutes-plus-a-recipe/
Iso
Roe is good. Matjes the sushi of central Europe. But as a German I also like the breaded, fried and pickled version. And for the Scandinavians here, what is the spice that gives the purple tint and interesting flavor to some of your pickled herrings? Is it a special Juniper berry?
Hank: Surströmming article in the making?
IF, the colour comes from pulverized red sandalwood.
Rasmus: Actually, pickled herring is so idiosyncratic that it cannot be broken down country-wide like that. Glasmastarsill in Sweden is sweet, but other variants of pickled herring are not. The Norwegians apparently don’t use much sugar at all. Doing research on it now…
Bpaul and Jocelyn: Wow, that is a great site! Will be spending some time reading.
J.R.: Let me know when that happens and I will come down and join you! Sounds like a blast!
Michael: Yep, these herring will congregate in any protected harbor. Humboldt and Tomales Bay are two good places to look for them, as are any spots along the Oregon Coast with shelter. Puget Sound is a big one, too.
Weaseltee: I’ll be right over! Love smelt, even if it happens to be the past participle of “to smell.”
Iso: DAMN! Now THAT’S a haul. Note to self: Buy cast net. Join Iso next winter…
IF: Actually, a glasmastarsill post is in the making…
As a fellow Scots-Irish I truly relish the holy herring…though I wait in anticipation of turning them into one half of my favorite Scots breakfast, fried eggs and kippers, in my smoker made from a wine barrel. Even then, normally just looked forward to the herring spawn for all the sturgeon drawn close to the bank and the bite was on…then there was the dangerously low dip in population in the Bay and I lost track–I remember when they still had fleets in the Bay as big as they have ‘em in Alaska….and that was just in the early 1990s.
Great! Being of Baltic descent, I grew up on herring pickled in vinegar. I was hoping you might have a recipe for pickling these guys as well, or preparing them like ceviche?
Thanks so much!
Ingrid
Man, I feel bad reading this knowing that I’ve probably used hundreds of pounds of perfectly good herring as striper, cod, lobster, and bluefish bait over the years. I am going to print this out and give the recipe a go in May/June when our herring start to show up here. We get them pretty big though. Should I try and debone the fillets? Last time I bought fresh herring, it was for a tuna trip and I think I paid $5 for a five gallon pail – fresh off the boat.
The photos look amazing.
Nate
These look beyond crispy. I can never get enough of tiny fried fish. They’re like potato chips — you can’t eat just one.
Up here in Connecticut the blueback herring & alewife (aka: “river herring”) fishery has been closed since 2002. I have always wanted to try one (they tend to be a bycatch while shad fishing). Although they are not sure, they think it may be because of exploding striped bass populations.
Brilliant, two of my favourite foods combined; fish and oats. We are ice fishing this week for smelts, so I am definitely going to try this recipe. Thanks!
You really owe yourself a trip to Petersburg, AK. where jigging for herring off the city docks is a productive pastime for locals and visitors alike.