Schooner's Shooters

Scouted all of the fishing pull-offs along the river road the day before. Read the tide charts, corrected for the upriver delay, got an early start and hit the water just before the turning of the estuarial  tide, a marshy, low-tide spot along a bend that created a nice pool, but still in range of the main current.  Large fish we're breaching and rolling all around me, up river and down. I showed them spoons, spinners, dry flies, wet flies, cured salmon roe bait.  Nothin'.  Not a nibble on the bait, nor bump at a spoon. I had three primary consolations.  The first was the fact than no one else on the river was catching anything.  I know this because the same three boats trolled past me repeatedly and gave me reports; nothin'.  Nobody.  My second consolation was that it was a beautiful day, and once I acclimated to the muck and strong cowfish smell (this is dairy country after all) it was a pretty pleasant way to spend a few quiet hours.  And finally, though the fall run salmon disappointed me, I DID finally manage to score...

...a Netarts Bay Oyster Shooter!* at The Schooner restaurant/lounge in Netarts. (The town shares that name with the bay).  I don't believe I've mentioned these on this blog before, so allow me to introduce you.  Netarts Oysters come from Netarts Bay, the cleanest bay of any on the American coast, so I'm told.  These oysters are the size of hen's eggs, chewy and buttery all at once.  I like to celebrate my arrivals and departures from Oceanside with one of these and a MacTarnahan's.  But there's no guarantee; they go fast and sometimes they just run out, through the winter season Schooners features an oysterless all Tai menu (Tai Tuesdays!) and so on.  So scoring a fresh oyster from Schooners has become something of a minor oracle of sorts for me, a sign from Ocean; scoring one on arrival puts me in balance with the place and helps me settle into a coastal rhythm, scoring one on departure augers an eventual return.  Of course, I've never tested this without the Mac's, so maybe it's just the beer buzz.  Either way, it's a ritual I think I'll stick with.  Who say's I'm not a "man of faith"?

And this was a departure shooter; tomorrow I leave my Oceanside Shangri-La and  roll on down the coast, to just south of California's Humboldt Redwoods State Park, and up to the mountaintop YMAA Retreat Center for a three week stay. I'll study and practice Taijiquan & Qigong with Master Yang Zwing Ming, and teach basic piano& guitar lessons to the resident students in return.  I have a powerful ascetic streak; I guess I'll find out if I've got the discipline for an old-school martial arts training experience. And if I don't keel over from exertion, I should have plenty of time to work on Pylos, the epic play-with-music I'm collaborating on with playwright Jon Berry- one of my more concrete "official" sabbatical projects.  More on that later.  For now, it's time to pack up the SabBatmobile, and say goodbye to this phase of my Peter Pan fantasy.

My fishing buddies; happy cows.  (Which, happy or not, smell like cows just the same.)  This iPhone snap doesn't even begin to capture the visually dramatic effect of this huge herd of pure black & white Holsteins scattered across a vast, fresh, vibrant green pasture, all against a backdrop of blue mountains.  I have a hunch this is one of the herds behind the world famous Tillamook Cheeses.)

*There are lot's of variations on the basic oyster shooter recipe; I like mine with a nice, cold, hoppy ale, but a good vodka works well too.  And while the tradition is to slurp these down in one gulp, I find them just too big to do that comfortably, and there are a myriad of textures and "mouth feels" that come through with just at bit -not a lot- of biting.  Love bites.)