by David Draper

Fried Anchovies and Sea Bass vs. Fried Mussels



You, and all my friends, are going to be sick of hearing this, but did I mention that I recently spent a couple of weeks in Turkey? This trip is going to make up my main conversational fodder for the rest of the summer, with much of it focusing on what I ate — some of which was good and some of which was not the best decision. Of the former, the seafood stands out as highlights of the trip. I’ll say this, Turkish people know their fish, which isn’t a surprise considering that waterways like the Bosphorus Strait define their country. Here are a couple of dishes I encountered. [ Read Full Post ]

by Chad Love

For those of us who grew up in the B.D. epoch (before digital), reading was the primary way to stoke our young imaginations. There were few books that fired my pre-adult synapses more thoroughly than Jean Craighead George's "My Side of the Mountain."

This classic adventure/survival/nature tale about a boy named Sam, a falcon and their woodland adventures spurred many a childhood fantasy of mine. There were two people I wanted to be in 1979: Luke Skywalker and Sam Gribley. I knew, even at that tender age, that I'd never be able to make it into the cockpit of an X-wing, but Sam's world was wondrously real, tangible and right outside my back door. Reading "My Side of the Mountain" was a huge factor in sparking my lifelong interest in hunting, fishing and the natural world.
 
So it was sad to read (via Stephen Bodio's always awesome Querencia blog) of George's passing.
 
From Bodio's blog:
Old friends and heroes are dying faster than I can write about them. Jean Craighead George, author of one of my favorite childhood books*, My Side of the Mountain, and sister to the even better- known conservationists and falconers , the twin brothers Frank and John, died last week at 92. NYT here, Wiki here, her own home site here. [ Read Full Post ]

by Joe Cermele

Here's one from the "I Couldn't Make This Up If I Tried" file. According to Europe's Practicalfishkeeping.com, German swimmers are being blamed for the death of 500 fish in a lake near Hamburg. Apparently they just couldn't ditch the swimmy fins and pool noodles long enough to find a bathroom. From the story: 

A spokesman for the local Angling Association said: "Swimmers who urinate in the lake are introducing a lot of phosphate. We're calculating half a litre/0.15 gal. of urine per swimmer per day." Applying anti-phosphate products to the water has been expensive and hasn't worked, fuelling a long-standing feud between fishermen and bathers in the lake.

[ Read Full Post ]

Kentucky high schoolers volunteered with the Ohio River Foundation to assess the health of a tributary to the Licking River, which flows into the Ohio, by collecting fish, invertebrates, and water samples. For more information visit our Hero for a Day page.  [ Read Full Post ]

by Bob Marshall

Sportsmen's groups got some new ammunition in their fight against the energy industry's push to open more public fish and wildlife habitat to development: A new Department of Interior report shows that 70 percent of public areas under lease by energy companies currently are "inactive" - meaning they are neither producing energy or part of an approved or pending development plans.

This helps put the lie to claims by energy's friends in Congress that public lands "locked up" for fish and wildlife are creating a supply problem causing high gas prices.

[ Read Full Post ]

--Chad Love

Ever heard of a "Kaluga Fish?" Me, neither. But they apparently get very, very big...

From this story on 11alive.com:
The classic line when someone says they've caught a big fish is "pics or it didn't happen." Well this one did happen. A 1,360 pound sturgeon was caught by fishermen in China's Heilongjiang River this week. The type of sturgeon, known as a Kaluga, or is sometimes called a river beluga, and is claimed to be the largest freshwater fish in the world. 

[ Read Full Post ]