Fish On The Beach… A Biblical Experience.
Here’s a great foodie experience I had in Puerto Vallarta. I was walking along the beach in the early morning and the beach was oddly covered in fish that locals were collecting it by the bucketful. Some people were throwing them back into the ocean but others were collecting them to feast on later.
Photo courtesy of Reb Stevenson
There was a lack of consensus as to why the fish had chosen to swarm the beach on mass. Some blamed global warming, some thought a nearby shark or whale drove them in, one guy said it was because the fish were spawning while another guy theorized it had something to do with the full moon.
While some of the people I talked to seemed gravely concerned, the staff at Blue Chairs knew that they had hit the jackpot. The third day of a fish feast washing up on their beach meant good eating for everyone’s family. After watching the locals collect buckets and bags full of fish, I ventured up to the restaurant where they were frying up platters of the fish and where taxi drivers gathered around and ate the piping hot fish on hand made corn tortillas with fresh lime.
The restaurant wasn’t selling the fish – just sharing the bounty with locals and curious onlookers like me! The fish was delicious and couldn’t have been fresher. I squirted it with lots of fresh lime and peeled the piping hot crispy-skinned flesh off the bones and popped the morsels into my mouth – I couldn’t have drummed up a yummier breakfast that morning!
Oddly enough, further down the beach was a larger than life version of the DaVinci’s Last Supper carved out of sand by a local artist…. maybe there’s a biblical explanation for the fish bounty jumping out of the ocean!
Yum Yum, fresh fish is the best.
What a fascinating life memory! Makes me wish I had been there for all of it. Thanks for sharing.
Sounds like the smelt we used to scoop up in nets or buckets on the water’s edge in B.C.
Thanks for reviving delicious memories.
My husband is an avid angler,so you can imagine all the fish stories I’ve heard…but yours sounds pretty amazing. I hope to visit Puerto Vallarta one of these days.
Weird. Eating kamikazi fish on the beach… being cooked “for free” by restaurant staff! Would never happen in Canada :p I’m freaking for you!
Okay that’s it! Fresh fish to dinner, I’m salivating while reading this!
Lorraine; not only would it happen in Canada, but it does every spring when the smelts are running. When I was a youngster in Essex County, about a hundred years ago, my parents went to the shores of St. Clair River and Lake Erie with bushel baskets. Men and boys dipped bushel baskets into the water; when these baskets were taken up, they were overflowing with smelts. It was my job to sort them by size, throw back the small smelts with a “See you next year.” My mother and other women fried up smelts on open fires, for a delicious community Fish-Fry. When it was time to return home, Gunny sacks were filled with smelts and taken home. Good memories,
Elaine, I also used to go smelting on Lake Erie with my grandfather and have great memeories of it. Also an outstanding experience seeing those slivery fish jumping on mass while scooping them up in nets and buckets.
But I have to say – the Mexico experience was pretty unique. These were much bigger fish and they were all washed up on the beach – very stange and very yummy! And it was a restaurant frying them up for free – not someones’s mother; I think I’m with Lorriane, not sure that it would happen here – too many letitious regulations prohibiting it!
I am live in BC, on Vancouver Island and this is something we do share with friends and family. Of course it is seasonal, what we harvest and share with everyone.