A take home pretty much any fish I catch in Florida that I can legally clean or fillet. Usually they taste great without much work right there – I can steam them up and they’re perfect. But even the “junk fish” are delicious. I fillet them up, bag ’em, freeze ’em, bring them back to Southern California and I know my wife will turn that “junk fish” into something delicious.

So I never think twice about catching and keeping catfish or grunts. They’re good eating, and if they’re too small to fillet, they’re great bait for something bigger that we will eat.

The fish in Florida taste a lot better than any of the fish in Southern California. That goes for any of the “junk fish,” too. I think it has to do with the quality of the water and food. Florida water is very clean and the food supply is clean and strong. The fish eat well there. The environment is clean, green and healthy.

California, everything is dirty and polluted, and it’s been like that for generations, so the life cycle for the fish there is pretty bad. You can taste the difference. Florida fish tastes clean and fresh, even when it’s “junk fish” that’s been frozen for weeks. California fish tastes “off,” even if it’s quality and fresh out of the water. I still think the fish tastes okay and is worth keeping and eating, but there’s just no comparison between the two.

Throw on top of all that – I’ve learned how to best fillet the catfish and my wife knows exactly what to do with those fillets – she can mince them into this delicious larb or some curry dish or something else and it’s outstanding. So even those “little” grunt fillets get put to good use – and since I found places where I can catch them in numbers, I can fill up the stringer and end up with a whole bag full of delicious, useful meat even when the other fish aren’t biting much.

I did this on the last trip when I found a honey hole of grunts, and then later discovered we could cut the smaller ones in half, send them out and get bigger fish, sometimes even a sailcat or a nice drum, on another pole while playing around with the smaller fish. It’s a lot of fun. In December, when I didn’t have a kayak and nothing else was working much, I was able to pull out some nice grunts off the Ft Pickins pier and fill up the cooler.

Cleaning fish is easy now with the house – doing this at a hotel was a problem. But now I put a table up in the backyard next to the hose, clean and fillet my fish, clean everything off with the hose, fish goes in the freezer or the cooking pot, guts go in the big freezer in the garage until the next trash day (so as not to bother the neighbors too much), rinse everything else off and you’re done.

Bringing the fish home is no problem, or at least no more of a problem than checking in luggage, which seems to be problem from time to time just because the airline has issues. But it’s easy to bring fish home – freeze them, put them in bags, pack in a soft shell cooler with those freezer packs, put that cooler in the luggage with whatever else you’re packing and send it back. Super easy and the fish always comes out fully frozen, never any problems. The more fish you pack, the easier it is, it keeps things colder.

And I notice the difference in my body when I eat more of the Florida fish. My body feels cleaner and more healthy, it’s good energy. Easy to digest, great protein, very good for me. It’s part of the good life.