About 11am.
J, from the kitchen: There’s a guy walking past the houe with a giant fish!
Me: WHAT?!
J: Look outside. He’s walking past the house with a huge salmon.
Me, getting up from my desk, going to the front window.
J: See, he just set the fish down on the grass next door.
Me, opening the front door, standing on the porch gawking.
The guy is wearing a black knit cap, sandy hair falls down his back. He’s got a backpack on and a fishing pole in one hand. I can just see the silver scales of the salmon from where I’m standing. His back is to us. He adjusts his pack, picks up the fish – it’s got to be two feet long – and strides up the hill towards the bus stop.
The salmon are running. We live about a 20 minute walk from the sound and there have been fisherman at the beach every time we’ve walked down there. The last guy I asked about the catch said, “Nothing but little guys, we catch ’em and throw ’em back.”
This guy, however, appeared to be taking his catch home for dinner. Do you think the bus driver allows you on with a freshly caught salmon?
I don’t know, but there is this (possibly apocryphal) story about a woman who wanted to get on the famed “chinatown bus” from NY to DC or vice versa with a live chicken, who, upon being told that she could not transport a live chicken, wrang its neck.
Good thing the fish was already dead though. You’d think he might have picked up, I don’t know… a plastic bag or something? Hope it was tasty. Unfarmed salmon… what a delicacy.
I love wild king salmon. My husband and I have gone to Alaska via float plane for the last three years and had great success at Riversong Lodge.
I have our guide fillet and vaccum seal the fish in Alaska and put it in their freezer. We fly United, non-stop to SFO, and then schlep 100+ pounds of salmon on BART. It’s still rock solid when we arrive home in the East Bay. Much cheaper than paying the Alaskan processing company and shipping it home via Federal Express!!! Nancy
100 pounds of salmon on BART. HILARIOUS.
I don’t think I’ve ever been more satisfied than the day I caught a 9-lb coho from the fishing pier north of Myrtle Edwards Park and then carried it home over my shoulder to my Belltown condo.
Even now that I live all the way over here on Capitol Hill, I make many August visits to Seattle, West to enjoy your prime access for harvesting the biosphere. No luck YET this year but we’re just entering prime time.