t.z. | Friday, 14 July 2017
HOLY MACKEREL
English language is funny, so is fishing. Fishing started originally as a means of gathering food. Seriously — who would have thought of that nowadays. Seriously - one comes across enough people who thing fish one wants to consume should be bought in a shop. Beste wrapped in plastic or already “smoked” and canned.
Bon appetite ….
HOLY MACKEREL - Recorded from 1803 with uncertain origin, but possibly a euphemism for Holy Mary, with Mackerel being a nickname for Catholics because they ate the fish on Fridays. Another suggested explanation is the practice of selling mackerel on Sundays in the seventeenth century (because its quality deteriorates rapidly), so it was known as holy fish. - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/holy_mackerel
I like to eat fish. Fresh fish I caught myself (or by a friend). I don´t buy fish. Not meat either. That´s me - feel free to do what you want.
Summer is the time to get fresh fish. I live in Norway for that reason … Norway is a bit schizophrenic in way. There is so much wild fish around. It´s crazy to think that a big part of fish farming industry is destroying the wild stocks. Nevertheless … I thought I give you this background so you can see where I am coming from for the fishing I mostly engage in.
This week I was fishing the salt close to Trondheim with my HT4. I got myself an intermediate clear line and tied up a few saltwater flies. Oh boy so much fun this was. The chaps I was with had spin rods and they laughed of course. What are you trying, they asked.
I had filled my box with Klympen, Krampa, Vaskebjørn and similar stuff with me. Advised by my airbnb hosts 6 year old daughter I started off with a size 12 caddis type fly. No luck. Could have been good. I listen to kids. They sometimes have a good feeling about flies. One kid in the Norwegian mountains liked the North Country Spiders in my box very much … here you go …. reason is that kids play a lot in the water and turn more rocks than we adults do. They often know better than flyfishing magazines what would work best … anyway - not this time, but still worth taking the chance.
I changed to a bright orange Krampa … and wohowow … as soon the fly hit the water 4 or 5 Pollock came out of nowhere. They were in each others way so none of them could get the fly. With the next cast I got one and so caught 2 very good sized one within the next halv hour.
And than … Just before we left I got a mackerel. First one for me. In total we got 8 mackerel around a halv a kilo, on big cod around 3 kg and 3 pollock around 700grams. I was fascinated by the mackerels colours. A really interesting fish … an boy did that fish taste good.
For dinner we had fried mackerel with potatoes and cabbage. It was delicious.
I believe that not many ever having eaten fresh fish like that, look back.