Waterfront was not a beautiful sandy beach for swimming, boating or skiing, although our district was only ten miles from the Pacific Ocean. Waterfront simply means the river, ponds, swamps, brooks, canals and ditches for fishing. Fishing was not for fun or sport, either. It was for food and livelihood. The catch was an important source of protein and income.
In our district, flooding occurred almost every year, and high tide often brought salty ocean water to our Front Door River. Therefore, wherever there was a puddle of water, we found fish there.
Clam was abundant along some sandy banks of the river. Snail was plentiful in the rice field. Catfish was found along the shores of river or swamp. Crab was about an inch long, found along any bank or ditches. Mudskipper was found along the muddy part of the river bank, together with eels. In the deeper water, there were bass, mackerel, shrimp and many other species. We even caught turtle occasionally, hard shell or soft shell.
We caught fish by three methods: with bare hands, with a net, or with poison herbs. Poison herbs were only very occasionally used, at certain seasons, and at a limited scale. The poison herb would either deprive the fish of needed oxygen, or made them dizzy, so they would float to the surface upside down to be easily caught. By hand was the most common way. A fish, when spotted, was usually caught with two hands, approaching from behind, because fish have monocular vision with broad lateral visual field. The hand below was to prevent the fish from thrusting forward by instinct. The hand above was to immobilize the fish by surprise. There was a certain trick - the middle and index finger were to catch its head, the thumb and ring finger were spreading out to catch its body just behind its pectoral fins. Otherwise its pectoral fins might stab and hurt you, especially catfish. In deeper water, we first built a mud dam to wall off the area, then drew the water out either with a water wagon and hand paddle. Then we caught the fish in shallow water. Such a project could be an individual one, or done by a group of 10 to 20 men.
We had two kinds of fish nets: small one with a short stick that any little kid could handle, and big one called "tang" that only an adult could handle. The "tang" has a stick about ten feet long, the man had to straddle over it for better control. It was supported by four bamboo sticks, one at each corner, each about four feet long. It was quite heavy. When folded, the whole thing was like a folded umbrella.
Once a fish was caught, it was put into a fish basket, hung over the shoulder. The cover of the basket was like a trap, a fish could get in, but not out, so the whole basket was soaked in the water from time to time in order to keep the fish alive and fresh. They were all made of bamboo, of course. A fish basket and a small fish net were standard tools for almost every single household in our district, even the poorest family could own one, for they could be handmade. We happened to own a big net, too, handed down from our grandfather.
Mother hardly did any fishing. Brother did very little because he was the man of the house and stayed home most of the time babysitting or housekeeping. I was the one that did most of the fishing, mostly for fun but sometimes I earned a meal of delicacy - seafood. I was once bitten by a snake, non-poisonous.
Clam and snail could be "picked", not caught. They were usually cooked with garlic and salted black bean, delicious. My maternal grandmother used the clam shell for another purpose: mouse trap. She placed some clam shell at the bottom of a deep water bucket, with some food-bait on top of the shell. At night, when the mice got down to the bucket, they also stepped on the clam shell that caused a noise. Grandma then quickly covered the bucket and trapped them. Mudskipper is the one and only fish that could also walk on mud. It is about the size of a finger. When deep fried, it was delicious, even the fish bone. We had two kinds of eels - yellow and white. Yellow eel was smaller but much more delicious. White eel was larger and more meaty. Eel is very slimy and must be firmly hooked between the dorsal surface of index-ring fingers, and ventral surface of middle finger, proximal phalanx.
Professional fishermen used much larger nets. They lived on boats and made their catch from larger rivers or the ocean.
No comments:
Post a Comment