Big Fish in the Mighty Mississip

Chris Morrow is the man. You might call him the fish whisperer. He can find fish and coax them onto a hook like no one I’ve ever seen.

My fishing trip with Chris was given to me as a gift from wife. She had won the trip in a raffle that was a fundraiser for the Missouri Chapter of the American Fisheries Society. The river has been high all year, but Chris assured me that he had adopted a new fishing technique that wasn’t dependent on water levels.

We put the boat in at the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area, which is located at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. It was about 20 minutes downstream, and we were in downtown St. Louis, just out from the Gateway Arch.

Within a couple minutes of getting a line in the water, we had a fish hooked. While I was fighting to reel that one in, we caught another one. So within our first five minutes, we had two fish in the boat.

The whole morning was much like that. Occasionally I caught a little break as Chris was moving the boat, but most of the morning I was struggling to hold the rod up and cranking for all I was worth. Those big blue cats are a load to pull up to the boat.

I had at least one fish that was more than 20 pounds. I had several in the mid-teens.

Chris said the meat isn’t as good when the fish our more than about 10 pounds. He let me keep five of the smaller ones, all of which were bigger than any other fish I’d caught in my life, ranging from about five to ten pounds. Chris filleted them, and sent me home with an impressive bag of meat, and even more impressive photos from the trip.

Launching Woods To Food

Have you seen the Missouri Department of Conservation’s new cookbook called Cooking Wild in Missouri by Bernadette Dryden? I am inspired by it. I work for MDC as an urban forester and saw the new book one day while visiting the clerical staff at the front office.  I was so impressed and inspired by the book. This is no mix a can of this and a box of that recipe book. This was no drown out the taste of wild meat by soaking it to death in salad dressing, bottles of bbq sauce or cream of mushroom soup. This was a fresh, proud, personal recipe book. I was thrilled we had published such a book and thrilled that Bernadette wrote it. It seems to me it is a very personal book, by which I mean this was not just an assignment but HER recipe book on the subject of hunting and gathering in Missouri. Great for you, Bernadette!! I love to see someone find a way to use their proudly developed personal skills to better their work, which I believe Bernadette did by using her vast experience with cooking, and cooking using local foods, to produce this book for MDC. And, I’m likewise thrilled that MDC went out on a limb to create such a beautiful, unique recipe book. Ceviche and cordials? Does this sound like drone government work to you? It sounds fantastic and inspiring to me!

So, I had the idea that my husband Fred and I could partner together to really get in to Bernadette’s book. How about we (mostly he) hunts and gather (likely both of us) the needed ingredients for the recipe book and then cook (likely mostly me) the recipes, say in a year in a similar fashion to the Julie and Julia book? Have you read that one? It’s about a lady in NY city trying all of Julia Child’s recipies in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and then blogging about it. Anyway, I thought our project sounded like a good one in many ways which leads me to this blog.