For twenty years I enjoyed rough shooting. I claim in my defence that everything I shot went into my own pot - it was all eaten - and I never, ever, took part in a City Boy driven shoot. If you didn't walk five miles of hedge and fall on your arse at least once it wasn't a proper shoot. If it was a good day, I'd come away with a hare or rabbit, a brace of pheasants and a few wood pigeons. Now I'd rather watch wildlife than shoot it. I've come to the conclusion that you lose a tiny bit of your soul every time you kill an animal.
As I also fish, I'm a bit ambivalent on aquarian species. It all depends how easily they die, really. White fish, trout and arthropods all have the decency to die fairly quickly and without fuss. Dogfish are a bugger - I guess a million years of shark evolution have given them a zombie-like longevity. Long after everything else in the boat is decently dead, Scyliorhinus canicula can still bite. Painfully.
Another hard creature to kill is the eel. I once brought home two live eels for our dinner from the Chinese fish shop on Newport Place, and popped them in the sink in some cold water whilst I headed for the shower. By the time I'd dried off, my then girlfriend had christened them Dylan and Hendrix and they were thirty seconds away from becoming pets. I had to send her off to the co-op on an errand before gripping them in a scouring pad to chop off their heads.
And forty years ago before our Anglian coast had become popular with the Farringdon-on-sea crowd, we would, as a group of youngsters, descend on the Butley Oysterage for both hot and cold smoked Anguilla anguilla. It was like a fisherman's cafe in those days, and you had to bring you own beer if you wanted alcohol. Years later I went back with a London gourmand chum who had never been served an entire smoked eel before and who attempted, for about ten minutes, to treat the skin as one would a succulent piece of pork crackling. As it's also used to cover sword handles, he had little success.
Anyway, eels have become something of a favourite of mine. I'm an eel champion. Their journeys from Sargasso Sea to the head of those tiny Suffolk tidal creeks is truly a natural miracle. And cold smoked eel shredded onto fresh scrambled home-laid eggs is truly a dish fit for the Gods.
Anyway, I was gladdened to hear a piece this morning on Farming Today on a project to re-populate west coast waters with the British eel; it is now as endangered, the programme claims, as the Blue Whale. So no Brexit today, dear readers; spare a half second instead committing yourself to the cause of Anguilla anguilla.
16 comments:
I don't think I've ever eaten eel so my contribution to this thread will be slightly off topic.
I've only visited Suffolk a few times in my life, mostly as a child. My mother was evacuated there as a small child in 1939 - to the lovely village of Glemsford - and was one of the lucky few who had a very happy experience. The village made the evacuees welcome and she and her sisters were lodged with a lovely man - the village coal merchant - who became a second father to her. (As her younger sister was only a baby, their mother had been evacuated with them).
It was the happiest time of her life and often went back to visit the village. The anniversary of her death was a few weeks ago so I got out the little book she wrote about her wartime experiences as an evacuee at Glemsford and read it again and it's like she's still speaking to me. I miss her.
So thank you to the good people of Suffolk, and in particular Glemsford. Because if they hadn't been so good to my mother in the wartime years, I wouldn't have her memoirs now.
Can't say I've ever tried eel.
I'll see if I can track down one of the slippery blighters for epicurean investigation.
Had eel in Japan.
Fantastic.
That was an interesting and colourful read, thanks, Raedwald.
My late father-in-law grew up on the banks of the Severn, and had a fondness for elvers, not shared by the rest of the family...
But... unless we leave the EU non-UK fishermen will try and catch the delicacies for restaurants elsewhere...
I'm not obsessed with leaving the EU, but without doing that we don a straightjacket, designed elsewhere, which prevents our democracy and freedom.
I have had eel in China, it was one of the bes things on the menu, deep fried. I agree with you about shooting, as a youngster I had a 20 bore and walked around many farms, I think my best bag was 3 pidgeons....nowadays I fly fish and 90% of the fish go back, especially if they are wild. I do like a smoked trout, I hot smoke my own and cold smoked trout is as good as salmon.
I try quite hard not to catch eels as they wrap themselves around your tackle and I have no intention of eating them.
I have to say if you want pheasant the easiest way is to drive around the southern parts of England in September when they let the birds out. Thick as a brick and all over the roads.
A significant problem for the fishing industry here is that the British generally don't like seafood. And fish and chips are expected to be cheap.
You overhear groups almost boasting of the fact, notably in Yorkshire, a supposedly fishing county.
So fishermen, whether British or not, may have to sell their catches on the Mainland.
Don't forget, mind, that UK boats can at present access other EU countries' waters, and that would end without an agreement for it to continue.
It was our government, incidentally, which sold off the quotas for UK waters to non-UK fishers, not any European Union body.
cockles, mussels, eels, salmon, trout, oysters, pollock, wrasse, cod, mackerel (my favourite) and probably a few more meals unremembered. Obviously much more variety on foreign stints and travels.
Used to hunt a bit and fish a lot as well, sweet and salt, mainly worm some spinner.
Funnily enough climate change - as with our wine - buggered many UK oyster beds. Maybe - also like the wine - we'll see a resurgence.
Span Ows
Now older and wiser, it embarasses me to recall taking the boat out, hauling mackerel with feathers and then using a box of fresh, prime mackerel as bait to catch .... pouting and pollock.
I used to boast I didn't catch bass in summer or cod in winter. I was a most incompetent fisherman.
I did a spell working on the trawlers fishing round Iceland. It's not just the fishing there's the shore side support industry also, there was a large engineering works providing maintenance, ice factory, offices, warehousing etc. Went back there couple of years ago and didn't even recognize the place, every thing erased like it was never there. I can't see it ever coming back to the extent that it was.
A staple of the east end of London years ago, along with jellied eels hot stewed eels were a favorite and the same pie and mash shops sold live eels on a window counter.
As a young kid, Hastings off-shore was the place to be.
Dabs, whiting and a few others were a great haul!
Hastings is renowned for having a failing remainer MP, who wants to give all these fish to others.
Stupid woman.
Most fish is good grub, I just can't abide the smell of 'em cookin', mind you Finnan Haddie......... och hain, that's different.
Raedwald re mackerel. Yes, me too, in the Scilly Isles on one of my may visits there, I recall the 'string of feathers' and thinking how obscene it was as a dozen or so tourists (me included [shame]) created a huge pile of the beeutiful fish pulling 4 or 5 out at a time. Never did it again.
Talking of using fresh mackerel to catch pollock, in my youth caught crayfish to use a bait to catch assorted small fish in False Bay. Yanked the crayfish out of rock pools at Bakoven - illegal of course.
Absolutely agree with you about the sheer deliciousness of smoked eel (and about the unforgotten chaotic charisma of the 1980s Butley Oysterage). I'm not sure though why you are bothering to catch dogfish, a nasty and an unappetising fish at the best of times.
Unless they crawled up the sides of your boat to cadge a free ride and do you personal damage? They do that kind of thing. One might term them 'the malicious Remainers of the marine world'.
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