We finally caught and kept our first ocean caught fish -- a really sweet tuna! We’ve been very slowly learning how to troll the deep and finally got hooked into some sweet squid lures that seem to have turned the tide. Good bait fish helped too!
We almost lost the tuna because the rod, well, kind of came to pieces when we started reeling the line in. The reel fell completely off the rod, because well, looks like all of the screws attaching it somehow became unattached. We’ve no idea how that kind of stuff happens but hey, check your rod next time before you go trolling and make sure the reel is actually like, attached to the rod. Anyway, we managed to jury rig the reel in place and along with the absolutely invaluable help of one of our guests Jim, we were able to get the tuna up into City Dogs.
A generous helping of cheap ass rum poured over the gills put the tuna down and within a half hour we were carving her up into sashimi and steaks. I’ve always been a bit of a sushi snob -- I stayed away from it for a long time, had my first real sushi at Nobu back around 2008 (thanks to the Boston Globe) and since then I’ve turned my nose up at anything but the best raw fish. I mean come on, who eats Gas Station sushi and how are they still alive?
I’ve literally never had anything fresher or more tender than the sushi we made on the boat. It just melted in my mouth, dissolving with just a little gentle chewing action. Our preparation was basic but effective: a little soy, some salt and pepper and a little touch of Lionfish Louie’s amazing Habanero sauce and we had a delectable platter to share with our guests. It made Nobu and Per Se look like amateur hour made with inferior ingredients -- but talk to anyone in the sushi game and they’ll tell you it’s all about using the freshest ingredients. Nothing beats right out of the water!
Later that night we had the tuna steaks with our friends Sterling and Nicol over on DocSea at anchor in West End with some nice rice and salad. Drizzled with a generous helping of Sterling’s crack fish sauce, the tuna was so good. There’s something about catching, cleaning and eating your own fresh fish that’s indescribably beautiful. It's not easy. Buying fillets at the market is much more convenient. Catching and consuming your own is completely divorced from the factory farming and industrial food production systems that dominate the American food landscape where what you eat is completely divorced from where it came from.
Catching and consuming that tuna, giving the scraps back to the sea, and keeping the less desirable bits for bait feels like doing the right thing, like living a life more in tune with our natural environment. Which is mostly what we’ve been doing of late, eating less red meat and chicken and a lot more fish, local produce and vegetables. It’s not like we’re going vegan anytime soon but we’re just trying to live a bit more in harmony with this amazing place we call home.
To that end we’re phasing in the use of a number of reusable aluminium water bottles which one of our amazing friends had laser engraved with City Dogs. It’ll mean a big reduction in single use-plastic waste -- we’ll be going either directly from 5-gallon containers or from our reverse osmosis watermaker straight into our PUR water filter reservoir and then down our parched guests throats. It’s a little step, but you know what they say about the journey of 1,000 miles...
