Make reservations for the day before turkey day on the New Seeker out of Emeryville Sportfishing.
I had about 7 friends who all did the same including a radio buddy at another station who shall remain nameless. The trip was a crab and rockfish combo. That means you head out to the Farallon Islands (wiki info) about 30 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge and fish for rockfish. They rent you the heavy rods and reels you need for this deep water fishing. The reels have a fast ratio so you don't have to reel as much to get your line back up.
With your rod and reel rental comes a weight and 2 shrimp flys. Here is a good how to article. The rules have changed since it was written but it tells you how it is done.
You lower your rig into the water with shrimp flys maybe a diamond bar, or in my case a Sumo 7x blue and chrome iron. It is a heavy long hunk of iron with a treble hook on one end.
The fishing was on for us. A few seconds after each drop you had one or 2 fish on the line. You would then reel up and decide to keep the fish or throw it back hoping for a bigger one. Since you could only keep 10 you would be throwing many back. I really wanted to get a ling cod, but it was hard to get the rig down past the rockfish to the lings. Some on the boat did, some nice 30 inchers were boated, but not for me. Oh well.
My friends did well, I could hear them having fun and I think one of them did get a lingcod.
The trip to the islands is pretty far, and we spent some time making sure everybody got their limits. After the rock fishing we headed to the secret spot where the crab pots had been soaking. The first few came up and they weren't exactly packed with dungey goodness! But the next few had more, and soon there were 6 crabs in the boat for everybody onboard.
Allright!
The sun was out as we came back in, Capt. Harry set a course towards the Marin coastline to avoid fighting the outgoing tide and once we turned left at Point Bonita we has some big swells to surf down. Whee!
Back at the Emeryville docks we took our rock fish fillets, (cleaned for us by the crew on the way in) our big onion bag full of crabs, and hit the tip jar for the crew with a 20 and headed off the boat straight to the big pots of boiling water where our crabs would be cooked for 1 dollar each.
20 minutes later the crabs were cooked, and we headed home. Not a bad way to spend time with friends.
For Thanksgiving I might not have the most "UN" mix of people over but it is pretty good.
Relatives came over who are:
1) Vegan from Hong Kong
2) Indian Vegan on Thursday because of religion also from HK
3) Japanese meat eater
4) teenage girl 1
5) teenage girl 2
6) HK traditional eater 1
7) HK traditional eater 2
and me
So we have this fun mix of Indian breads, Japanese treats (Plum wine!), lots of vegan friendly food, the crab, and a turkey. We had some merlot from Lake County's Ceago biodynamic winery. Read this .pdf from the LA Times last month about visiting Clear Lake.
The turkey went into my new Big Green Egg. I love my Big Green Egg.
Not my Egg, not my turkey:
They cost big bucks, but are really easy to use and work great. They weigh a lot and that is a key. It is a smoker with a really thick ceramic body and top that holds the heat in and lets you control the temps. So the brined turkey cooked at about 300 degrees, about 15 minutes a pound. I never had to add coals or open the lid. I just got it started, threw on a few hickory chunks and put the 15 lb turkey on. It also helped to free up an oven in the house to cook other stuff.
B.T.E. Best Turkey Ever!
After dinner the gang gathered around the tv for a few rockin' sessions of Guitar Hero II. Yes we were all brought together by the Playstation 2, a couple of plastic guitars, and Cheap Trick's "Surrender"!
Saturday I felt like I needed to eat healthy so I went to Bayfair and had dinner at Fresh Choice.
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