Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Grunion Run

I saw on the news a few nights ago that the Grunion are running on Southern Calif beaches.The Grunion are a sardine like fish that really come ashore this time of year under full moons it seems.The females dig a hole and lay eggs and the males follow and fertilise.If you ever tried making out on a beach at night in damp sand I have to say the fish have the right idea doing it seperatley.I have never tried Grunion but folks can catch them but only with their hands.I hear they taste a lot like Smelt which I think is a Herring family member and which I love one or two times a year.When I was a lad in Western N.Y. my father and uncles would go smelt fishing this time of year.With Smelt I think it involved netting them and a Lantern.I went once but mostly slept through it since it was a lot warmer compared to Ice Fishing.I can get frozen one pound bags of Smelt from Canada at Santa Monica Seafood.Like most small fish my fave is to wash them in egg roll them in flour or cornmeal and fry them though I have just done them in a Saute pan.The first summer I worked in North Truro I saw something a bit like it but later in the year being the start of June when all the locals were scooping up lots of sand eels.A lot of them were freezing the sand eels for bait but some of the older Truronians were cooking them the same way I do Smelt or simmering them in a tomato based sauce from an old recipe of Portugal.I tried the sand eels cooked by"Uncle Jimmy" a relative of the Francis family that owned North Truro Camping area where I worked for a month and they were very good.

No comments: