My mom has fishing stories about my Grandma and Grandpa. When she was a little girl, Grandma and Grandpa enjoyed the sea. She shared two of those stories with me.
Early Morning Fishing Trip
Grandma and Grandpa loved to fish when we girls were young. A few times Auntie Bev and I joined them on early-morning fishing adventures to Mexico. We were probably about 9 and 11, respectively. Grandma woke us up early at about 4:00 am; it was cold and dark. Auntie Bev and I quickly dressed and got in the back seat of the car; we slept on the hour-long trip down south to Rosarito Beach.
When we arrived at Rosarito Beach, we were the only people there. The sun was just beginning to make an appearance. Grandma and Grandpa found their spots on the beach and pounded their fishing rod holders into the soft sand. They both wore waders, so that they would stay dry while they stepped into the surf to cast their lines as far as possible out into the ocean. Then they would wait for a nibble. If the fish weren’t biting, they would place their poles in the rod holders and watch for any telltale movement of the rods. Auntie Bev and I would sit on a mat further up the beach and try to stay warm until the sun lightened the day. Grandma would pack us a meal of nigiri (rice balls) and meat or sometimes just sandwiches; the food tasted especially good on the beach!
Sometimes Grandpa would let Bev and I try our hand at fishing. I remember that once I got to tend one of the poles that was anchored on the shore. I thought that I saw the pole jiggle, so I started reeling in whatever was on the end of the hook. Hallelujah! There on the end of the line was a wriggling, nice-sized perch—it was a keeper!! That was the first fish that I ever caught. What a thrill! Other times when I would reel in, there was usually just a big clump of seaweed tangled on the hook, so that first perch was like finding a treasure. Grandpa laughed when he saw that fish on the beach; he walked over to the fish, removed it from the hook, and put my fish in the bucket to take home. I know that he was really surprised that I actually caught something. I felt so helpful that day.
We would usually stay there for a few hours before calling it a day and returning back to the U.S. I remember going through the border checkpoint and answering the border patrol officer that I was born in San Diego when he asked me what was my birth place.
When we came home, Grandpa would clean all the fishing equipment and put everything away. Grandma would take the fish out to the backyard and start scaling and gutting all of them. It was both creepy and fascinating to watch Grandma scaling those perch with her big cleaver. The scales would be flying every which way as Grandma rapidly scraped off those translucent scales. Then she would carefully slice off the heads and gut the fish. Grandma and Grandpa tried to never let food or anything go to waste, so they would use the fish heads and entrails as fertilizer for their vegetable garden.
Grandma would usually bread the fish and fry them. The surf perch were delicious, but they had a lot of little annoying bones. Fishing was both enjoyable and productive for Grandma and Grandpa. They really enjoyed eating the fruits of their labor.
Bird Rock
Bird Rock is located in La Jolla, California and is a large intertidal area that is a popular destination for tidepooling. The actual Bird Rock lies about 50 yards off the rocky shore. The “rock” is a huge formation whose base is usually underwater. The sea gulls love to sit on the rock, hence the name.
According to the Internet, Bird Rock is not a marine preserve, so the only restrictions for collecting sea specimens are guided by State fishing regulations. Years ago I read a newspaper article in the San Diego Tribune about how the huge influx of Asian immigrants had decimated much of the edible sea life in the tide pools. Apparently the Asian populations were very resourceful in obtaining their food from the ocean shores. It is now more difficult to find the variety and numbers of sea life that we encountered when we were young.
When I was in my elementary school years, we would often go to harvest hachi-mai (chitons) from the tide pools at Bird Rock in La Jolla. It was a fun adventure to spend a few hours at Bird Rock collecting the chitons, which were plentiful at that time.
I guess that I would explain chitons as a mollusk similar to a very tiny abalone. The animal lives on the moist underbellies of rocks along the ocean shores. The chitons cling to the rocks like abalone; they have eight overlapping butterfly-shaped shells to protect the soft muscle. Grandma (my mother) would make a delicious entrée from the chitons, but more about that later.
We would make the trip to Bird Rock during the day when the tide was low. Grandma would drive there with my sisters (Harumi and Bev) and me to act as helpers to pick the chitons. In the later years, Harumi didn’t always come because she was a teenager and had her own agenda; but Bev and I loved to go and explore the rocky shores.
When we arrived at Bird Rock, the first glimpse of the rocks below would always take my breath away… mostly because we had to climb down a steep and narrow stairway from a seemingly dizzying height. The concrete stairway was old, cracked, and rundown; the railing was rusty and corroded from years of exposure to the salty ocean spray. We would pick our way down slowly carrying empty buckets for the chitons. The air filled our noses with that special scent of salt, seaweed, sea creatures, and the occasional whiff of unpleasant seagull droppings.
Arriving on the floor of Bird Rock meant the start of our adventure capturing the chitons. At the base of the stairway, there was a large expanse of smooth rocks piled three to four feet high. The rocks were, mostly, anywhere from two to four inches in diameter, and it was not difficult to walk over them. As you descended down further to the floor of the pools, the rocks would gradually become larger. The larger rocks were craggy and rough and had sharp edges. There were spaces between the rocks which were filled with sea water even though we were there at low tide. Walking became much more difficult at this point.
We would begin our foraging, each with a bucket in hand. You had to walk gingerly over the rocks because they were wet, and most of them were covered with seaweed. It was extremely slippery, and we girls would always end up with squishy, wet tennis shoes before our trip ended. And one or more of us would usually come home with cut and bleeding ankles from falling off the rocks. After several trips of injuries, Grandma finally broke down and bought us galoshes. Now we could slosh through the rocks without worrying about soggy shoes or cut ankles, although we still had to be careful about falling down. Looking back, I guess that it might have seemed funny to be wearing boots at the beach; but we never had a thought about being unfashionable– we were just happy to have dry and safe feet.
We had been instructed by Grandma to get the green chitons, not the pink ones. The pink-shelled chitons were older, and their flesh was tougher. The green chitons were young and tender. Of course, we wouldn’t take the chitons that were too small because there would be little meat on them. The green chitons that were about two inches long were the most desirable ones.
The method to get the chitons was simple. You just picked a rock that you could turn over; the rocks that I could turn over probably were about 10 inches in diameter, maybe 10 to 15 lbs. Once the rock was flipped over, you could see one or more chitons clinging to it. Usually the chiton would start to, almost imperceptively, move across the rock; that’s when you had to quickly grab it and twist it off! If you didn’t get it off on that first try, the chiton would cling tenaciously to the rock. Then it was just about impossible to get it off. You would just have to wait for the creature to move again; sometimes splashing it with water helped, but other times we just had to abandon the chiton and move on to a different rock. The chiton would eventually move back to the underside of the rock, but we couldn’t waste our time waiting for that to happen.
We girls would not spend our entire time harvesting the chitons. It was fun to search for other sea life in the pools. I would often find brittle starfish when the rocks were turned over. They were such fragile animals. In my youthful ignorance, I would pick up the brittle stars only to have one or more of their little legs break off in the palm of my hand. Now that I’m grown, I know that the starfish can regenerate their legs; but at the time, it was morbidly fascinating to see those little guys wriggle around in my hand while losing a leg or two.
There were also small fish in the tide pools, but they proved to be impossible to catch, although we did try. Larger starfish were common in the pools, but I didn’t find them to be particularly interesting.
We found many small black sea snails stuck on the rocks. They were easy to pull off. Sometimes we collected those for Grandma to take home and cook; but there was so little meat on one that it was hardly worth the effort to get them. The meat was delicious, though. Grandma would cook the snails in the same kind of sauce that she used for cooking the chitons. When the snails were ready to eat, we would each get a pin (like the sewing pins with heads on them). We would poke the meat with the pin, and pull out the small morsel; the meat was about the size of two small peas. You couldn’t really make a meal out of the snails, but they made a nice snack!
Sometimes we would find large turban-shaped shell mollusks. The shells were white and very pretty. Grandma would cook them, too, but the meat was somewhat tough and slightly bitter. The small black sea snails were much tastier, even though the snails were tiny in comparison to the turban shells.
Once I found a baby octopus, and I was overjoyed and excited. What a find! I quickly picked him up, but almost immediately shook the octopus off my hand. When I picked up the octopus, the suction cups on his tentacles started clinging to the fingers on my hand, and I panicked. It was such an odd, uncomfortable sensation that I shook my hand HARD to get him off! Luckily he fell back into the water and slithered away leaving a small inky trail behind him. These sea animals squirt the black ink to camouflage themselves from predators. The baby octopus was cute, but he had scared me.
We often came upon sea hares, which are also known as sea slugs. They truly looked like giant garden slugs, except that the sea hares were a shiny brown color. I don’t recall them being slimy, but they had smooth skin. The sea hares we found were usually the size of a big Idaho potato, and they lay very still in the water next to the rocks. When they did move, they crawled along the tide pool floor as slowly as a garden slug. They were easily picked up, but you had to be careful because they could squirt purple ink as their method of camouflage. If you did put a sea hare in a pail full of water, you would often end up with purple water inside, too.
After spending a few hours collecting the chitons, the buckets were full and heavy. Grandma was 5’2”, which was considered somewhat tall for a Japanese woman in those days. Grandma was a little plump and weighed about 130-135 lbs. She was not a big woman, but Grandma was strong. Each large, filled bucket probably weighed about 15 to 18 lbs. Grandma would do all the carrying because we girls were too weak. She would carry a bucket in each hand and carefully climb over the rocks and head for the steep stairway.
That stairway was not only steep and narrow, but each step was shallow. There was barely enough room for the length of your foot to rest on each step. It was truly dangerous by today’s standards. Climbing up the stairway was not easy, and it was especially tiring for a person balancing more than 30 lbs. of chitons. There was one small landing about halfway up the stairway; the stairway jogged at a slight angle after reaching the landing. Grandma would put the buckets down briefly to rest on that landing before continuing the journey up to the top of the bluff. Grandma would be out of breath by the time that she reached the top of that stairway. And sometimes she would have to make a second trip to bring up the remainder of the chitons. Grandma put the buckets in the trunk of the car, and we all piled in the car for the ride home. Our satisfying adventure was over for the day, but Grandma still had to take our harvest home to cook. That was a two-day process.
Grandma would put the chitons in a huge pot of boiling water. She would simmer them, but I don’t know how long the chitons would stay on the stove. I don’t think that it took too long to cook them… probably 20-30 minutes. Grandma would let the cooked chitons cool down completely, then the next day she would pull the meat off of the outer shells. She would use her bare hands, and the meat would come off easily. The meat looked so small after it was removed from the shell; each one was about an inch or an inch-and-a-half long and one-third of an inch in width. You could put two or three in your mouth at a time.
After removing the meat from the shells, Grandma would simmer the chitons again with a sauce made from soy sauce, water, sugar, ginger, maybe some fresh garlic, and probably a splash of mirin (Japanese sweet cooking wine). The resulting dish was delicious! We could make a meal out of the chitons and some steamed rice. After all that work, we could only get about two or three meals for the whole family out of those chitons; but what an accomplishment it was to get those meals from the fruits of our labor!
When I look back at that time, I know that it was fun for us girls. We didn’t really see it as work. It was a lot of work for Grandma, but I’m pretty sure that she also had a lot of fun getting the chitons and also preparing them. Grandma loved to cook.
I have to say a few words about Grandpa and Bird Rock. Grandpa usually worked seven days a week, so he was rarely able to come with us on our chiton hunts. I do remember him coming once, though. He got some chitons, but he was there to find abalone. I am amazed that, years ago, abalone could be harvested from the tide pools. Grandpa wore waist-high waders and went into the deep water peering into the underwater crevices. He brought a crowbar to pry the abalones off their perches on the rocks and also brought some other tool (perhaps a screwdriver) to help with the removal process. Grandpa actually managed to get a few abalones with his tools that day! Good job, Grandpa!!
When we brought the abalones home, I watched Grandma use a wooden samoji (rice paddle) to pry the meat out of the shell in a whole piece. As I said, Grandma was strong. Then she sliced the meat thinly, battered the slices, and fried them tempura style. Heavenly! The meat was tender and mildly flavored. It turned out to be a meal fit for a king.
Many years later, Grandpa related a story about a time when he caught two lobsters at Bird Rock (also amazing, in my book!). I don’t remember how he caught the lobsters, but he carried them up that daunting, concrete stairway. When he reached the top, there was a game warden waiting for him. The game warden fined him $50 on the spot! The lobsters were undersized, so they were illegal to take. Sadly, the warden confiscated the lobsters, so Grandpa was out $50 as well as the lobsters. I often wonder if that game warden had delicious lobster tails for dinner that night plus $50 in his pocket.
Our days at Bird Rock remain as some of my favorite childhood memories. They were fun, carefree days. It was always a grand adventure to explore those mysterious ocean pools and discover the live treasures from the sea.