The sun had yet to rise and Lucy’s diamonds were still in the sky. I woke, dressed quickly and left the house to go pick up my accomplice. As I pulled up to the house, the front door opened just enough and he slipped out like a stealth. He hopped into the car and said in a whispered hush, “are you ready?” “Affirmative”, I replied and we drove off into the pre-dawn darkness to accomplish our mission… to catch a fish. For our second-annual father/daughter fishing trip we had high hopes of catching the elusive 20-inch fluke. Why? Because I’ve been dying to fillet one myself and my dad, a seasoned fisherman, was the perfect person to teach me.
On Long Island it’s not hard to catch a fish, but our tough fishing laws make it hard to keep them. For fluke—which is what we were fishing for—they need to be a minimum of 20 inches. We arrived at the fishing docks early and decided to take the Captree Island Princess charter boat. We had taken that charter trip last year and what we didn’t catch in fish the crew made up in giving us a good time. If nothing else, we knew we were guaranteed some fun. Our boat set out for the bay and then we drifted for fluke. We each had a few nibbles and we both caught a bunch of fluke, but nothing big enough to keep. And then luck happened to hit our way… Dad caught the keeper—21 inches long! It was only 10:30 am, but we started talking about sautéing this fish in butter, garlic, lemon and all other sorts of good things.
We couldn’t wait to get home and get the fish filleted. First, we took a picture to prove this fish was no story and then I got to work.
I had an idea of what I was doing and Dad carefully walked me through the rest. We finished with four lovely fillets. Dad had his for dinner but I was slightly apprehensive – I wasn’t sure the fish would go over with John. I decided to use the Barefoot Contessa Sole Meuniere recipe and John gobbled the entire thing up. In fact he loved it and that is no fish story!
