We had a surprise visit from James A Wallace and Mary Lee Hu this week. Wally announced that they would only be here for a few days and he wanted to ruin his health fishing and by Jimmie I set out to do just that. I called my “always ready for a fishing challenge” buddy John Dash and we put together an outrageous agenda. The first afternoon was spent in his little boat setting ring nets for Dungeness crab in the Dungeness Bay and just how cool is that. And thank goodness for GPS handhelds...the fog was extremly heavy and it was right at twilight when we pulled the last net. We raced home...four blocks...dumped the boat...changed clothes and struck out to jig for squid at the Port Angeles city docks and maybe set a couple of shrimp pots to to make sure we covered all the bases. The shrimp pots turned out to be a sterling idea because the always allusive squid didn't show up for the party, but we at least had them shrimpies to show for what we had been doing til 1:30 in the morning.
We popped outta bed the next morning...for those of you that are buying the idea that we "popped" outta bed, I have a bridge I would like to sell you...and loaded the boat for a trip to Lake Sutherland. Our targeted fish was the Kokanee sockeye salmon. The weather was beautiful and the fish were willing. Mary soon discovered that the water in the boat kept getting deeper but thanks to her unending diligence and an empty Vienna sausage tin we stayed afloat out on the lake. The fishing was done with the most ridiculous rig I have ever put on the end on my line. The locals call it "Christmas tree lights with a wedding ring". It was a long line of four or five spinner spoons which went on for about three feet...follow by another section of line (about 1 1/2 feet) that had an array of bright orange beads separated in the middle by two gold bands with a ring of faceted crystals set between them which looked much like a channel set wedding band in miniature. No matter how strange the apparatus...within a few hours we all got our limit. We called home to tell the Pat and Cynthia to get ready for a seafood feast.
Everyone was fast to prepare the side dishes that we were well known for or at least we had a considerable comfort zone about pulling it off...shrimp fried rice...fresh corn in a butter sauce...crab on toast...artisan bread and a beautiful fruit tart...but we were all dragging our feet over commenting to the preparation of the main dish...the Kokanee salmon. All of us had considerable dose culinary pride on the line and we were all very tired from “ruining our health”... not to mention a large measure of libations. Then almost at the same moment in time three of us said “here...I'll do it” and the next thing you knew three new “main” dishes were presented. It was one of those magical events where everything came together at the same time. Baked salmon in lemon butter...pouched salmon in vinegar and pepper and steamed salmon with ginger and onion. We could not decide which was the best. Another great evening capped by a great meal.
