Fishy Business & I Want Some Of It!!!

Jackie and I were driving up the California Coast on our way to Grants Pass and we stopped on the beach to take some pics. I was shooting pics of the scenery and I saw these two guys carrying something really heavy up the beach. My curiosity got the best of me and I thought those buckets were full of fish. I was right. The surf fish (smelt - a small fish) were laying their eggs in the shallow surf and these two guys were throwing out a net and capturing schools of them. Little did I now that the two of them, whose parents were from Laos by Vietnam, caught fish like this in their homeland. Their mom was at the picnic shelter getting ready to barbecue up a large mess of these fish. Yummmmmm! I just had to have a fish or two or 10!!! The whole family was here for the cook out. Here's the pics. These people were very friendly - they were Mong people from Vietnam. The grand mother ended up cooking me about 2 lbs. of these fish to take with me. She spiced them up with salt, jalepeno's and some chili pepers. It was delish!!!
Here's the whole family gathered around for the picnic and I'm right in the middle of it.

This is the grandma Mrs. Her (their last name) preparing the fish that just came out of the sea. See the spices next to the pan of fish? When I saw her preparing the fish - I was hooked!

This is Snoop, the pit bull, waiting for a taste - just like me. Yummmm!

Oh Ya! The fish are ready! And I'm hungry. These are small fish so you don't gut them. You just cook them whole and peel the meat off the tiny bones.

Here's the patriarh, Mr. Her who just gave me a cooked up batch of these surf fish seasoned w/salt, and hot peppers. I must have eaten about 20 of them. I told them I just wanted to taste a few - but - they insisted I take a batch of cooked fish. Well, since they had about 200 lbs. of surf fish, I didn't feel too bad. What they didn't eat they took home and froze. They had a whole bunch of other picnic food but I didn't hit on that - Only because Jackie was saying, "Mike, we need to go now". It was a real score at the beach.