by Scott Sadil
I’d start by saying she was fat, really fat – but then immediately it would sound like the start of a bad joke, tasteless, inappropriate. How fat was she? She was so fat . . . .
But it’s true: She was so fat I had to leave my rod at the bottom of the bank, down by the river, so I could haul the salmon, a big female chinook, up to my truck, parked alongside the state highway. Even then, by the time I poked my head over the gravel shoulder, finally reaching the top of the trail, I was huffing and puffing – and not just because I’m a senior citizen who has noticed, lately, that there’s a lot less oxygen than there used to be in the air we breathe.
I laid the fish on her side in the gravel beside the rear wheel. I didn’t want cars slowing down, guys honking, making a scene. With the help of my wading staff I made it back down the trail without once losing my footing, a better than average descent. Climbing back, I kept the tip of the two-hander out of the tree branches, the line free of the shrubs and weeds, taking my time through the steepest parts, one step at a time, so that I didn’t break free in the loose dirt, the toes of my boots wedged between exposed rocks.
At home I wrapped a cord around the biggest part of her belly. I stretched the length of cord alongside a tape measure on the table saw in the garage. Twenty-two inches – a small waist, maybe a high school student, a slender one. But for a salmon, even one almost three-feet long, her girth made her look a little obscene, like a summer squash, a zucchini, say, that has grown beyond all reasonable proportions while your attention somehow strayed.
Of course, she was full of eggs. I’d thought about that before I killed her, finally deciding I wanted the meat, and if I didn’t make some ikura, Japanese salmon caviar, I could pass along her payload to my buddy Chaz Letner, who fashions his own “berries” for winter steelheading.
Still, when I cut her open, I was startled by the number, the amount, the two skeins packed with thousands of pearlescent, pea-sized morsels of potential life, reduced now to tiny pouches of nutrition, pound for pound – or ounce for ounce – about as good as it gets.
Filleted and chopped into manageable hunks, her meat went into a soy sauce and brown sugar brine, awaiting a spell in my new Big Chief smoker. The roe, however, deserves a more delicate touch.
What you want is dashi stock, the source of the savory “umami” flavor so popular in Japanese cuisine. Simple dashi is made from kombu,or kelp, and katsuobushi – smoked, dried, and fermented skipjack tuna, or dried bonito flakes. You can gather ingredients and make your own dashi, or you can buy instant dashi granules, some of which, unfortunately, are loaded with MSG and other artificial flavorings, although the best ones (Kayanoya) come recommended by professional chefs.
To cure your salmon eggs, mix up a dashi brine.
1½ cups dashi stock
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sake
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 tablespoon salt
Once separated from their skeins and rinsed clean in cold water, the salmon roe, or eggs, go into the brine and spend the night in the refrigerator. Your ikura, or salmon caviar, is ready the next morning. Spoon a dollop onto your poached or scrambled eggs before heading to the river, and I guarantee you’ll feel fortified to face the autumn chill, fueled by some manner of potent vitality that draws you to the river in search of fish that have returned there, too.
Gray’s angling editor Scott Sadil counts anadromous fish, along with butternut squash and fires in his woodstoves, among the many blessings of fall.
