A friend invited a bunch of us to go fishing and then head to his place to fry up a feast from whatever we caught. Since eating is one of my favorite things, I loved the idea of participating in the full journey of my fish – from catching, to cleaning, to cooking, and to eating of course! It was my idea of a perfect day.

Fishing

I have fond memories from my youth of getting up at sunrise on camping trips and going fishing with my dad. That was always fishing on the shore of a lake. It mostly involved playing cards and eating snacks with your fishing rod propped up on the y-shaped stick you’d stuck in the the ground, interspersed with short bursts of action when the bobber popped up and you jumped up to grab the rod, set your hook, and hopefully reel in a fish. I’d never been ocean fishing on a boat before, but I was excited to try it.

It was a calm, sunny day on a boat with beer and surprisingly good breakfast mcmuffins. That’s already a great day in my book, but on top of that, we caught fish! It was pretty different from lake fishing, so took a bit of getting used to. Instead of maneuvering a live worm onto the hook, we were using squid and live sardines. I’m not gonna lie – I lost a few sardines trying to grab one from the tank and get it onto my hook without breaking it’s neck or piercing its brain. And it took me awhile to get the feel for how much more subtle the signs are that I had a fish on my line.

But eventually I got in the groove. Check out my first catch! It’s crazy how the innards of the fish swell from the pressure change of being pulled up from the bottom of the ocean, and actually pop out of the fish’s mouth. By noon when the boat headed back to the marina, Nelson, Katy and I had a pretty solid haul. Plenty for a fish taco dinner feast!

But first, these hungry fishermen and women needed to reward ourselves with a little lunch. We headed to my friend’s backyard to enjoy the sunshine, sip ice cold beer, and whip up an outdoor lunch of lengua tacos.

Filleting

Stomachs full, we headed to the kitchen to clean and prep our fish. By the end I think I got pretty good at scaling, gutting, and filleting those fish.

Look at all the great fillets we had for our fish taco fiesta. Plus a giant bowl of fish heads and bones for soup. There was more than the three of us could eat, so we called for backup. Unsurprisingly, many of our friends were happy to come by and help us eat our way through the day’s catch.

Feasting

Back in the yard, we toasted tortillas and battered and fried our fish fillets. I can’t get enough of outdoor cooking.

If you’re going to have fresh fish tacos, you better have a homemade toppings bar – green and red salsa, black beans, crema, red cabbage, tomatoes, olives, mango salsa, onions, cilantro. That taco tasted as good as it looks. I think I ate five of them.

There’s always room for dessert. Which in this case was whiskey chocolate cake made by Anthony, topped with green tea ice cream courtesy of Colin. Have I mentioned how glad I am to have friends who love food as much as I do? It doesn’t get much better than this.