Jasus Ialandii or West Coast Gold!

When people think of the West Coast, the word ‘crayfish’ springs to mind. This, in turn, conjures up mental images of happy, bronzed tourists lounging on the beach sipping wine while someone ‘chucks another prawn on the barbie.’ Am I right? Every tourist blub mentions the wonderful seafood, especially crayfish, which abound in our coastal waters.

Perfectly braaied

West Coast Gold! (Pics thanks to Google)

And they do. Abound I mean. But there are rules and regulations that prevent you from simply wading into the water with your net and scooping a few to serve with savoury rice, mayonnaise and subtly flavoured garlic butter for lunch. Before you head out to sea in a correctly licensed boat to catch your legal quota of 4 crayfish per day, you must first have a permit which last season cost R92. Also, crayfish can only be caught in season (usually mid November to end of March) and between the hours of 08:00 and 16:00, not before and never after. If you don’t have a correctly licensed boat, well, you can ring-net or scoop-net from the shore. No diving from a boat and no oxygen tanks are allowed, but a snorkel is ok! All simple so far and easy to follow. But, here is the tricky part, read below:

A Fishing Frenzy!

One of the really lekker things about living here is sharing our favourite 'things to do' with friends and family who visit, some more often than others! This weekend Rob's daughter Angie flew in with her partner for a really short stay, just a weekend, but it gave us a reason (excuse??) to do all the things that we love doing without feeling guilty! Not that we ever do feel that. (They also took all the super photos below.)
So we drove to Saldanha harbour and showed them the barges that are still there from our wreck 'Margaret', and we braaied for lunch and then on Sunday we decided to travel further afield and have lunch while we were out (that's my favourite bit). So we headed to Velddrif first. This is where the Berg River widens out as it meets the sea. The village is small with good fishing and a variety of little shops and restaurants overlooking the river. Galleries and antique (junk?) shops stand side by side and pelicans float about in the river while flamingos (flamingoes?)paddle and feed in the salt pans next to the Cerebos Salt factory.

An art gallery next to an 'antique' shop!

Then we went to the village of St Helena Bay, where Vasco da Gama first set foot on our soil on 4 November, 1497. It is also the only place in South Africa where you can stand in the same place and see the sun rising and setting over the sea! The harbour there is large but usually quiet and empty with just the sound of boats rubbing together and ropes straining against the pull of the sea. We couldn't believe our eyes! We could hardly find a place to park as the entire area was full! Bakkies, cars and trailers were everywhere and people were standing in groups all staring out to sea.

All waiting for fresh snoek

We thought that there was a regatta or some kind of race, but no, it turned out that the snoek (Thyrsites atun) were running and more than 70 boats had headed off to catch their share of these huge, silver, torpedo shaped fish. There is no rule to the arrival of snoek, they can stay away for a season or two and then suddenly appear to cause a fishing frenzy for a while along the West Coast waters before disappearing again just as quickly. Because they are nomadic and move around, they are not a stable source of income, but they are highly sought after and are fortunately plentiful, cheap and most importantly, sustainable! But, I hear you ask, how do the fishermen know when the snoek are here? Shoals are located by watching the sea birds, we have seen hundreds and hundreds of cormorants circling and diving in our bays and obviously following huge shoals of fish. Also a more technical way of doing things, is to use an echo sounder on the boats.

Bringing the catch home to sell.

They prefer water temperature of between a chilly 13 and 18 degrees, they can grow to 2 meters in length and weigh about 6 kg. Fortunately they freeze well and so are available throughout the year. Having said that, there is nothing to beat the excitement of watching the boats come home, followed by screaming,squabbling gulls and laden with fish that have been cleaned at sea. Called 'vlekking', the fish are sliced open and left flat, ready to grill or braai.

Fishing boats are small and crowded.

Now to the important part, eating them. Although they can be dried and smoked, the traditional way is to braai them with baked sweet potato or freshly baked bread and jam. And not just any old jam either. No, they must be liberally smeared with apricot jam before being grilled for about 15 minutes, (so the experts say!), no longer or the fish will be dry! Another way is to make 'smoorsnoek', that is snoek off the bone, mashed with potato and served with fresh bread and 'korrel konfyt' or grape jam.

From torpedo shape to open flat, ready to braai!

Rumour has it that a snoek braai is one of the only things that make South Africans living overseas long to come home for.

Snoek for sale, anything fresher is still swimming!

Now, after all that making-your-mouth-water stuff, I have to admit, I do not like snoek. I hate having to fiddle and fuss with bones, and snoek must have more than their fair share of them! I had enough of chewing a mouthful of bones when I was small and kippers were on the Sunday breakfast menu!

Give me a piece of hake any day!