The Fish with the Chip in its Head

We went salmon fishing again today out of Depoe Bay. Laird Brown's boat, The Maranatha, headed out ten minutes early at 5:50am since the four of us scheduled to go were all there. The wind was picking up and it was gray, but not as foggy as Tuesday. We were fishing with a grandfather and his 12-year old grandson. Ready, set, fish!! By 6:45am we'd already had four fish on the boat: 3 natives we threw back and one large hatchery Coho that we kept. Lots of action first thing out of the gate sets a high bar for the rest of our expedition. "What is the deal? We haven't caught any fish in the past 15 minutes?!?"

We caught a few more wild fish, and the port side of the boat (where Kevin and I were) seemed to be the fish favorite so we let the two others move over and reel some in…they each brought in a nice Coho and that was it for the day. The sun came out and we headed back to the bay. As we waited in line to have our fish fileted, an official Fish Guy wearing the standard light brown short-sleeved shirt and carrying a clipboard asked if he could scan our salmon. "Sure" we said and watched as he picked it up, scanned it, and got that nice "you've got a plate in your head" beep. Our salmon apparently had a record. (A percentage of hatchery fish have a microscopic chip implanted in their snout. It has a code on it that comes up when scanned, and it tells what hatchery it came from, what year the fish was raised and when it was released into the river.) The Fish Guy asked if it was okay if he took the chip out and then asked us if we wanted a postcard that told us about our fish. "Definitely!!" So I put our name and address on the front side of a postcard that had our fish's ID number on it, and I assume at some point in the future we'll learn about the life and times of this Sunday's dinner.

In the meantime, bon appétit!