JULY 5, 2022 – KLEWNUGGIT

Woke up to the most serene reflections in the water to the point where you could not tell where the water hit the shore in the distance because the shore was so perfectly reflected. Hard to explain, hopefully my pictures do it justice. Today is harvest day so after I patiently waited to let John finish his cup of coffee, he helped me get out all the gear for crabbing and shrimping and load it into the whaler. He bid me goodbye and good luck and I was on my way. It’s about a 20-30 minute slow cruise in the big boat to get from the main channel to where we were anchored. The crabbing area is about half way back out again, and the shrimping grounds even farther out. As I mentioned the water was absolutely glassy smooth, not a whisper of wind, and even though there was a cloud layer overhead, the temps were relatively warm. I set 2 crab traps and 2 shrimp pots in the same areas where we’ve caught them before, then headed back to the boat to wait. We had a lot of inside boat chores to accomplish, mine upstairs and John in the engine room. After three hours we went to check our sets and found lots of crab this time and kept 5 keepers, and put the pots back down for another set. Happy to see lots of females in the pots hopefully making babies to continue to populate the bay. Shrimping was marginal but we managed 56 prawns. Strange that the spot that produced over 150 (I marked it on the chart) prawns in May, didn’t pan out as well this time, so we moved them slightly and put back down for a second set. Meanwhile back at the boat I cooked up the prawns we caught and peeled them for dinner, and killed/cleaned the crab to prepare for cooking. The second set yielded another 50 prawns and tons of crab again but mostly female or small males – oh and one baby halibut! I felt sorry for the baby halibut trapped inside the pot with a dozen angry crab! They didn’t seem to attack it but I would think it would be worried about losing an eye! One of the crab we caught was really nice sized but had no pincers left, we were pontificating as to how it fed itself without them. Clearly lost in a crab fight? So tonight I couldn’t come up with any ideas for dinner other than prawn salad which didn’t sound very interesting (because we eat crab and shrimp louis salad frequently on the boat) so I came up with a recipe I thought I’d share because I think it turned out really good and it was a nice canvas for the prawns.

PRAWN/CORN SAUTE: I had 3 ears of corn that I needed to use so I cut the kernels off the corn, and roasted them in a pan with a little olive oil until they started to char, along with some finely minced red bell pepper. I added a little butter just for flavor, along with chiptole chili powder, creole seasoning, salt/pepper. Once the corn was nearly done I added one clove of minced fresh garlic and sauteed for a little longer, and added some minced chives, then removed from heat. I had already cooked the prawns but if not, I would have added them right at the end to cook in the corn mixture. Anyway, I added my cooked/peeled prawns to the corn mixture, along with chopped cilantro and a touch more olive oil and seasonings, and tossed. Serve warm or room temp, it’s a nice light dinner, we each had about a cup of this mixture and was plenty. It would have also been good served over arugula if you like arugula (which I love, John does not), or with a lightly dressed green salad to round things out.