Fishing Log

Fishing Log

My first trip to Samos, twenty years ago

 



Fishing boats and the rock seawall in
 Agios Konstantinos (St. Constantine), Samos Island, Greece





July 8, 1997 - Just returned from Greece yesterday.  The water there is cold clear and salty.  Even more beautiful than the Caribbean.  Sadly, the waters of Samos have been overfished and much of the seafood eaten there would qualify as bait in Florida: squid, octopus, cigar minnows, Boston Mackerel, and glass minnows (smelt?) which are fried whole in olive oil, and eaten as snack food.

 

The nets the Greeks use for commercial fishing, like their heavy-keeled wooden boats, are hand made.  'Sport' fishing from shore is done with hand lines spooled on a plastic ring, or float fishing is done from the rock seawall, with a gang of little gold hooks (like sabiki rig) wound around a wad of stale bread, then cast into the water with an 8-ft rod.  (The float is round, almost the size of a tennis ball.)  The schooling fish (cigar minnows) are foul hooked by the snatch line as they feed in the floating specks of bread.  'Frank the Fisherman' of Agios Konstantinos, told me he guts them and fries them whole in olive oil for the table.  Seems like a cast net would be a more efficient way to catch them, but I never saw anyone there using them.

 

 


Greek hand line

The grilled octopus, fried squid, and the shrimp there were all surprisingly good, but he best finned fish I ate on Samos was what looked like a pink snapper.  They are weighed whole in the restaurant, then either grilled on a brazier, or scored vertically, fried on the bone, and served with the head on.