FRESH CATCH

You’ll need a soup spoon, a sharp knife—something bigger than a pocketknife—and a surface you don’t mind getting messy. Although my grandmother said “big as a butterbean is big enough to eat,” the best bream for frying are hand-sized and up. You’ll first need to scale the fish. Anchor the bream on your surface using your hand or the knifepoint in the tail. With the edge of the soup spoon, scrape away from the tail in the direction of the head, removing the scales from both sides of the fish. When all the scales are gone, you need to remove the head and entrails. Imagine a slightly diagonal line that runs from a point behind the fish’s head to its rear end. (Yes, fish have those.) The line should run just behind the small pectoral fin on the side of the fish. Mind your fingers as you cut along that line through the fish, removing the head. Using your thumb, remove everything from the body cavity and rinse the fish. Then, keep it in a container of water while you clean the rest of what you’ve caught.

Cooking is simple. Heat an inch or so of cooking oil in a cast-iron skillet. Mix corn meal with some salt and pepper. (If you’re feeling adventurous, add some paprika.) Remove a fish from the water, but don’t dry it; just shake off the excess water, then dredge the fish in the corn-meal mixture. (Some folks like to coat the fish with a milk-and-egg mixture before dredging but that just seems redundant to me.) Be sure and get some corn meal in the body cavity. When the oil reaches medium to medium- high heat, gently lay the fish in the oil. Put as many bream as you can lay flat in the skillet. Cook until a golden crust forms, then turn the fish over and brown the other side. Drain the fish on some paper towels. You may need to add oil as you cook to keep the level high enough.

You should be able to pull the meat away from the backbone with a fork. Oh, and don’t forget to eat the tails. They taste like potato chips.