Fish Fries and Friends

When I was stationed in Orlando, Florida as a Navy corpsman, one of the things I enjoyed doing was to fish. Many times it was for bass in the several lakes on the base or close by. Here in Pennsylvania we measure fish by its length, but in Florida fish are measured by how much they weigh. Some of the best fishing was at night. Using plastic purple night crawlers, I would wade through the cattails to the edge of open water, cast the bait, and slowly reel it back in, hopefully with a fish on the line. Most times it was catch and release. I had no way to keep or cook it.

Not so when I fished with a friend who had an eighteen foot fishing boat on the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral. We kept, cleaned, and sent those fish home with men who had homes off base to store the catch in their freezers. When the freezers were filled with sea trout, blue mackerel, and flounder, the fishing buddies and their wives would plan a fish fry.

It was usually at the house of a chief petty officer. On duty he was addressed as chief, but off duty it was Floyd. The ladies would make the coleslaw and whip up the batter for the hush puppies. Floyd would pull out a round charcoal grill and place the huge harvest skillet over the hot coals. It took three cans of melted Crisco to fill it with hot grease to fry of the fish and hush puppies. My mouth still waters at the thought of the flakey succulent fish and hot tasty onion flavored corn meal balls fried to a golden brown. The coleslaw was the balance to the meal. It was a BYOB with some guys drinking beer and others like me sipping on soda pop.

Once while fishing, the ocean swells were six foot. I never got seasick, but came close. The waves lifted the boat one third of its length. I stood in the boat to fish. My buddies said, “Sit down or you’ll fall overboard.” I tried to sit for about five minutes and knew that wasn’t going to work. I was nauseated and stood saying, “I’d rather fall overboard than hanging over the side puking.”

I kept three of blue mackerel and took them to the base chow hall. I asked the cooks if they liked fish. When they said yes, I said you can have two if you cook one for me. When lunch came, I had a wonderful fish plate and French fries while the other men were served glops of beef ragout with okra.