Actually, the title of this post doesn’t refer to the pig variety of hog, I know it’s misleading. Today’s kind of Hog Heaven means big fish. Really big fish. Lingcods to be exact. The cry of “hog ON!” still echoes through my ears and brings a smile to my face, though I’m sure it makes those around me wonder what I’m smiling at.
Anyway, we had a great day fishing off the coast of northern Northern California. We got to the dock at 8 and met our friend at his boat. It was foggy and misty out, but the water was glassy and smooth in the harbor. It was similarly perfect out past the jetty, and we had a good day catching blacks, a couple of greenlings and a copper. At the end of the trip, when we had 4 rockfish left that we were allowed to catch, we decided to go after the lings, the big boys of the area. In order to insure greater success with the lings, we put on bigger lures (sorry, can’t divulge what kind, color, or weight) and then we jigged. It ended up being a great day for them, much more successful than our friend had anticipated. The biggest ones we got were 2 that he had caught, one being around 20 pounds or so. Now that was a hog. It was a lot of fun to fillet, which I did later back at the house.
{The Hog}
But back to fishing, I caught a ling myself. We had been told that lings don’t venture far out of their holes, nabbing only what comes close to them. So I visualized some lingcod sitting pretty in its little cave, enticed out of its comfortable home by my delectable morsel, and then I felt the tug. Reeling up a lingcod feels very heavy, like pulling up a bucket that’s jerking around up through the water to the surface. When it got up to the top is when it pulled the line around and started thrashing a bit. It was an aqua lingcod, and I held it’s head out of the water till Jan gaffed it for me. It was a nice size, plenty big enough to keep. By that time of the trip, the sun had been out for a while, so I came home with a pink face, like most everyone that went. Pink and happy. We caught 80 rockfish, plus greenlings and around 7 lingcod. A good day.
At the house we gobbled down cottage cheese with garden cucumbers, peppers and shallots before tackling filleting all the fish we brought back. It’s a favorite summer meal in my family. Its even better when we have tomatoes, yum! I love filleting fish, it’s a feeling akin to doing art, a feeling of being totally engrossed in feeling the knife glide along the bone structure, my fingers following to guide and check to make sure the knife is as close as it can be to the back bones, through the bones of the belly until cutting along the bones of the tail, laying the filleted piece against the cutting board, and sliding the knife parallel to the board to separate skin from meat. I kind of zone out when I do it, time kind of becomes irrelevant. And then its done and the cooler is empty.
{My Fillet Station}
Tonight we’re frying up the fresh lingcod for dinner, with homemade tartar sauce, salad, and Yukon gold potatoes roasted in duck fat. Speaking of which…
