"Is it a keeper? Dad. Is it a keeper? DAD."
That was Nico, age six, at about 5:15 on a Saturday afternoon on the bay side of Bahia Honda, holding his rod straight up in the air with a fish about the length of my forearm spinning on the end of the line. I didn't know yet. I had to get it off the hook, get the tape measure out of my backpack and do the math in my head while a six-year-old vibrated next to me.
Two rods, one license and a bag of shrimp
We bought two spinning rod combos at Academy in March, $58 for the pair, and I bought my resident annual saltwater license for $17. The kids don't need one at their ages. Before the trip I read through the size and bag limits for the Keys, then read them again on my phone at the water, because the rules change and I'm not the person anyone should be quoting on them.
Bait was a bag of frozen shrimp. Maya, who is nine and wants to be a marine biologist, will happily study a sea cucumber for twenty minutes but will not touch a shrimp, so she was in charge of the bucket and the snacks. Nico had no such problem. He had both hands in the bait bag before I had the first hook tied.
For an hour we caught nothing but sea grass and one tiny fish that went straight back. Then Nico's rod bent, he yelled loud enough to turn heads down the shoreline, and he reeled in what turned out to be a mangrove snapper. On the tape it came in just over the minimum, by maybe half an inch. I measured twice. Then I measured a third time because Dana asked if I was sure. It went straight into the RTIC on ice.
Cleaning it, badly
Confession: I'm not good at cleaning fish. My dad took me fishing a few times when I was a kid in Gainesville, but he always did the knife work. I filleted that snapper on our cutting board at the picnic table with a kitchen knife that was not made for the job, and it took me 25 minutes. I left too much meat on the bones and I know it. What came off was two small fillets, maybe six ounces total, which is a nice dinner for one adult and not a lot for four people.
So we made a plan. Everybody would get one snapper taco, and the second round would be black beans. We had a quart of Rafael's black beans in the cooler, frozen at home, that had been doubling as an ice block since Thursday.
How we made the tacos
I set the Blackstone up on the downwind side of the camper, which I'd been worried about since the day I bought it, and it held its heat well enough in the breeze. Here's what we did:
- Cut the fillets into strips, patted them dry with paper towels and seasoned them with salt, cumin, garlic powder and a squeeze of lime.
- Made a quick slaw: a bag of shredded cabbage from Publix, the juice of two limes, a spoonful of mayo, salt and a handful of chopped cilantro. Toss it, then let it sit while the griddle heats.
- Warmed the tortillas on one side of the griddle while the beans heated in a pot on the Coleman stove.
- Cooked the fish on a lightly oiled, hot griddle, about two minutes a side, flipping once. Snapper is delicate and the strips broke up a little. Nobody cared.
- Built the tacos with fish, slaw, a little hot sauce for the adults and a lime wedge on the side.
The smell of lime and hot oil coming off that griddle brought a man over from two sites down to ask what we were cooking. Nico told him "I caught it" before I could open my mouth.
Dinner for four, technically
Nico ate his snapper taco in four bites and announced he'd catch a bigger one in the morning. (We packed up in the morning. He is still bringing it up.) Maya ate hers slowly, then drew the snapper in her nature journal with her watercolor pencils, gray with a little red along the fins, and wrote "caught by Nico, cleaned by Dad (badly)" underneath. I'd like that to be the last time she's right about something like that.
Dana's verdict was that the snapper taco was the best thing she ate all trip and the black bean tacos were a close second. Rafael will be happy about at least one of those.
Next time I'm bringing a real fillet knife, a bucket of seawater to hold the fish while we decide, and a better plan for cleaning one in less than 25 minutes. Nico is bringing his rod. He has already asked whether Maya's can be his backup.
