Sailfishing

So my stuff has arrived in Seattle and I finally found the cable that connects my camera to my computer. So here's a few posts that have been in limbo for the last month.

First up, to celebrate graduation my Father, my housemate Youhei, my friend Glenn and I all went on a half day charter on the Sonny Boy out of Crandon Marina on Key Biscayne.

Fishing was good, the seas not so much. Off shore the seas were 6-8 feet. So things were ... bouncy. But after a rough time picking up bait we set the kites and almost immediately the first sailfish was on. I was closest to the rod and so the first one fell to me. It was the second sail I've caught, and it fought much more than the first. However, shortly after we boated and released it my inevitable decline began.

Normally I don't really get seasick. But just in case I'd taken a bonine that morning, and had been eating some crystallized ginger. Alas, it was not sufficient. I felt like Rainier Wolfcastle being swept away by the radioactive tidal wave while filming the Radioactive Man Movie ("My eyes! Ze goggles do nothing!") The seas were intense, and after taking the above photos of my dad catching the next sail, I had apparently not spent enough time staring at the horizon. The next four hours were...vomitastic.

I was able to raise my head off the rail to take a few more photos though. A highlight of the trip was Youhei's first time fishing. Ever. He spent an epic fight against a good 30lb kingfish until...chomp! Huge cuda took off the back 1/3 of the fish! Still, it left most of the good steaks.

Glenn caught a sail himself, and we got two cudas. Normally I don't eat barracuda due to ciguatera but since I was moving (and frankly, you'll get it from snapper and grouper too) I said screw it and took one of the cudas (filleted) home. I made it into a huge bowl of ceviche for a graduation party at Glenn's that night.

It was easily, hands down, the best ceviche I have ever made and or/had. Cuda is delicious.

Kingfish however has the problem of being very, very fishy. And we had about 10 one-pound steaks of it. So I was determined to find a way to make it tasty. To my delight I found three.

1) Walker's Wood Jerk Kingfish. Use the jerk marinade, it's delicious and overpowers any unpleasant taste on anything. It's the reason I completely gave up ever bothering to make my own jerk marinade. It simply can't compete with the real thing.

2) Grapefruit and Garlic Kingfish. Marinate the steaks in grapefruit juice with a little salt, pepper, and garlic. The acid does a bit of a ceviche thing on the fish and cuts the fishiness way back, while the garlic goes well with the sourness.

3) Soy-Miso-Shochu Kingfish. Youhei gets the credit for this one. A paste of miso, soy, and shochu.

Lay foil on the grate and grill. (You could probably oil a clean grill, but we grilled these for a party in which a wide variety of things would hit the BBQ and didn't want to make everything fishy.) All three were superb. Frankly, with kingfish freshness counts for a lot.