| In my experience,
those fish that people tell you are "actually really tasty if you get
'em on ice right away and trim off all the dark meat and then soak 'em
in lemon juice in the fridge overnight," or something to that effect,
really aren't. Seems to me, with so many West Coast game fish that are
just plain delicious, you might as well release the ones that aren't,
rather than going to a bunch of trouble to make them edible. That's why I had never, until just recently, eaten a single one of the hundreds and hundreds of California barracuda I've caught. Plenty of people had told me how good they were if ... well, if you get 'em on ice right away and so on. And plenty of others had told me the opposite. I just didn't see the point of keeping them when I knew how good yellowtail and rockfish and so many other species were. Finally, last October off northern Baja, a friend I was fishing with insisted we keep one of the big "stovepipe" barracuda that were inhaling our lures every time they hit the water. Partly because we couldn't keep them off our lures long enough to catch anything else and partly out of pure spite, I agreed to bust a 7-pounder over the head, bleed it, gut it and throw it in the icebox. It yielded long, thick fillets that we skinned, cut crosswise into little steaks about an inch thick, marinated for a few minutes in soy and honey and then grilled over wood coals. It was indeed delicious -- briny-tasting and "gamey," but in a good way without, honestly, even a hint of "fishiness." Don't get me wrong -- you won't catch me throwing halibut back in favor of barracuda, but I won't turn my nose up at it anymore, either. |