
Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly don't tell them where they know the fish.
~ Mark Twain
This morning I woke up to find "Fishless in Seattle", a New York Times op-ed piece, highlighted on my husband's computer. Timothy Egan, who writes about politics and life from the West, did an essay about playing hooky and going salmon fishing in Puget Sound. It seems every type of salmon have one purpose in the fall - "to spawn and die."
"Chinook, the mighty kings, are returning to the Columbia River in numbers not seen in decades," according to Egan. My husband likes to fish with his brother, who he called and told about the run. They commiserated with each other that they weren't out on my brother-in-law's boat. I could hear the sighs through the phone.
Today as we walked along the pier, I caught him looking in the water, muttering, "I don't see any salmon." I think he actually expected to see hundreds of fish feeling sorry for him that he didn't bring pole and willing to leap into his arms as some kind of compensation.
My husband loves fish. On our second date he cooked me some kind of white fish. Whenever we are in a fish related city, he eats salmon. The first time we were in Seattle I was almost 7 months pregnant with our first daughter, walking up and down hills, which is what I remember. He remembers being on some island eating salmon.
Our first day in Seattle on this trip we went to Pike Market and bought smoked salmon. Yesterday we went across the street to the lower rent district and bought more smoked salmon simply as a taste test I was told, to see if the less expensive batch was equally as mouthwatering. It was. I am not a connoisseur, especially when little bones are involved.
Tonight we stopped at a restaurant for dinner and he had halibut and I had aki tuna. I hesitated over the lasagna with homemade noodles. He went back to the open kitchen grill to ask the chef how he cooked the halibut. With vermouth, which we don't currently have in the pantry at home but was instructed to write on the grocery list tacked to the fridge immediately upon landing.
Aye, aye captain!