Cold water fish taste better

May 7th, 2008

It is a rare occurrence, for me at least, to be fishing in water too cold to swim in. The bulk of my angling, and the bulkiest fish I’ve hooked, have been in warm water. If you can’t swim, you can still fish, and if you can’t fish, you can still go for a swim. The two are linked, like popcorn and butter, socks and shoes, or stock car racing and chewing tobacco.

It has been said there really is no such thing as a bad day of fishing. Even those days when you push a hook through your thumb (and it does happen) are better than a day at work. If you can punctuate that day with a good swim, and cap it all off with a fish dinner, even better.

Spring fishing, however, requires more discipline. Any old fool can climb into a boat and drop a line over the side. If the water is warm, you can drop yourself over the side as well, no worries. The colder the water, the more careful you have to be. A conservation officer once told me that most male drowning victims are found with their fly down or pants undone. This may seem strange, unless you’re the type to lean out of a boat yourself.

A smart person knows enough to never get in a boat unless they can survive falling out. Spring fishing is worth the risk, mind you, because cold water fish taste better. Ask anyone what their favourite freshwater fish is, and nine out of ten will say pickerel or trout. There is a reason for this. The trout and the pickerel are cold water fish, and stay down low. The bass and pike don’t mind a little warm or shallow water and, while still quite delicious, can wind up tasting somewhat stronger on the dinner plate.

Trout fishing in the spring is like shopping in the frozen food section. You might say, the trout benefits from staying refrigerated for most of its life. It makes me wonder what the fish at the bottom of the ocean taste like, because it’s plenty cold and dark down there, in the deep with all the heavy stuff. I’ll wager those fish taste like metal, or a cut lip, because human blood and sea water are alike in many ways, after all.

I have never caught a fish from the bottom of the sea, and don’t want to. Unless library books have lied to me all my life, those fish are scary, and should be left alone. Down where the water temperature is near freezing and sunlight can’t penetrate, you’ll find such undersea monsters as the angler fish, gulper eel, fangtooth, dragonfish and giant oarfish. Find pictures of these saltwater demons, and you’ll be glad you don’t see them every day.

Fish living in the ocean’s twilight zones don’t eat every day, and have to rely on food that falls down from above. They also eat each other whenever possible, and many have developed long, sharp teeth and expandable jaws and stomachs, sort of like a few of the anglers I’ve met. Some fish, like the primitive hagfish, gather around a floating corpse with surprising speed and devour it by burrowing into the animal and eating it from the inside out. That alone should be enough to keep an angler in the boat instead of the water. It is a sacrifice I am willing to make this spring, and I hope the trout will understand.