The fisherman's larder:
Right river, wrong time
Josh Crumpton heads to California's Smith River and finds impossible cuts, blueberry pigeons, and a vegetarian out for blood
THE SMITH River runs jade-green even where it slows, down in the estuary where the redwoods finally give way and the Pacific starts pushing back. I spent my first morning there on an old, breached dike, fog low on the water, watching big fish crush baitfish, over and over, about 200 yards past the end of my best cast.
I hadn't come for the salmon, which was fortunate, because it was July and there weren't any. The kings come with the fall rains. Winter belongs to steelhead the size of your leg. I'd come north on assignment: a story on the Smith River Alliance, the people who have spent decades making sure California's last major free-flowing river stays exactly that. But you don't stand beside the Smith with a rod in the truck and not fish it, and in July, on foot, that means coastal cutthroat: the sea-runs that ride the tides in after bait.
The Pacific coast, where coastal cuts fatten up.
Josh trying to reach them, but they’re out of range.
I had no boat. I had the dike, the breach the river had punched through years ago, and a theory that the changing tide would funnel bait through the gap and push the cuts into casting range. The theory was sound. The fish didn't get the memo. All day they stayed out there, busting bait in water I couldn't touch, while my friend and I watched, recalculated the tide, and stayed too long.
It was out there, somewhere between tide calculations, that he caught me up on the local news. A blueberry farmer up the bottomland, one of the neighbours I was slated to visit for the story, had a pigeon problem. A bad one. Bad enough that the state had issued her a depredation permit.
I chuckled a little inside my head. I'd talked to her on the phone three weeks earlier, setting up the visit. Great conversation, right up until I mentioned I'm a hunter and an angler and she told me she's a vegetarian. There was a pause you could have parked a flatbed in. Then she said, graciously, that she appreciated what hunters and anglers do for conservation. It just wasn't for her. She wished no harm on any living being.
I wondered how she was feeling about that now.
There was a pause you could have parked a flatbed in
Fishing for juveniles in the bottle-green waters of a Smith River canyon.
So, the fishing story became a farming story for a day. The work was unglamorous, which is what made it honest: rows of bushes bent heavy with fruit, the farmer walking us through where we could and couldn't shoot, because this was crop protection with rules attached, not sport. Coffee in metal thermoses on the tailgate. Blueberry stains on everything by ten. We cleaned birds in the shade that afternoon and the breasts told the story: dark, rich meat, crops literally full of the same fruit we were standing in. A chef could wait a whole career for pre-seasoned game.
Rendering blueberries down to a gloss.
That evening there was a community gathering: long tables, the loose federation of neighbours that shows up when a farm has had a hard season and a good day in the same week. I did what I do. Pigeon breasts seared hard and fast, rested medium-rare, sliced thin, finished with a pan sauce of shallot, a splash of vinegar, and a scoop of the very blueberries the birds had been stealing, cooked down dark and glossy — a little sharp, a little wild. The birds and the berries had been working on the pairing for weeks. I just finished the argument. The vegetarian did not partake, but I'd swear she plated it with satisfaction.
And then, from the far end of the fire, the better lesson.
A member of the Yurok Tribe was cooking that night too: fresh-caught springer salmon from the Klamath, the river just to the south of where we stood. His fish was split and set on stakes around the coals in the traditional way his people have cooked salmon since before California was called California, the fillets slowly bronzing while the fat dripped and hissed. He had what I didn't. The right river at the right time. Spring kings, running when spring kings run, cooked the way that water has always taught the people who belong to it.
King salmon, cooked in traditional Yurok style.
I ate his salmon and my pigeon off the same plate, and neither one felt like a consolation prize. That's the whole trade. You go for the fish. You stay for the people. The river decides which story you get, and the good trips are the ones where you say yes to it.
A few days later I finished my assignment on the Smith, forever grateful for a pigeon dish I'd never have cooked otherwise, and did the only sensible thing an angler can do when the fish won't adjust their schedule: I adjusted my river. Loaded the truck and headed south to the Klamath, where the springers were in and the timing, for once, was mine.
Pan-fried pigeon and blueberry sauce
Ingredients:
Produce
- 3 thyme sprigs
- 1 shallot, minced
- 1 cup blueberries
Protein (optional, but it makes a meal of it)
- 4 pigeon breasts, skin on if you have it
Dairy and bakery
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Pantry
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 0.5 teaspoons black pepper, cracked
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil
- 0.3 cups port or dry red wine
- 0.5 cups chicken or game stock
- 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon honey
Method:
- Dry and season: Pat 4 pigeon breasts — skin on if you have it — bone dry. Season both sides with 1 teaspoon of kosher salt and 0.5 teaspoons of black pepper, cracked. Let them sit out while the pan heats — cold meat sears badly.
- Sear: Get a heavy skillet hot. Add 1 tablespoon neutral oil. Lay breasts skin-side down and don't touch them. 2 minutes, then flip, add 1 of the 3 tablespoons unsalted butter and 3 thyme sprigs, baste 60-90 seconds. Pull at rare-to-medium-rare. Rest on a warm plate.
- Build the sauce: Same pan, medium heat. 1 shallot, minced in the fond, 1 minute. Add 1 cup blueberries and 0.3 cups port or dry red wine. Scrape the bottom. Reduce by half.
- Reduce: Add 0.5 cups chicken or game stock, 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar, 1 teaspoon honey. Simmer until it coats a spoon. Crush about half the berries with the back of the spoon; leave the rest whole.
- Finish: Off heat, swirl in the remaining 3 tablespoons unsalted butter. Taste for salt and acid. Pour in any resting juices from the plate.
- Serve: Slice breasts against the grain or leave whole. Sauce under, not over — you want the skin to stay crisp.
Notes
Pigeon is a rare-to-medium-rare bird. Past medium it turns to livery. If the sauce goes too sweet, another splash of vinegar pulls it back. Works the same with dove breast — just cut the sear to about 90 seconds a side.
PHOTOGRAPHY: JOSH CRUMPTON
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Crumpton
Josh Crumpton brings 30 years of fine dining and wine industry experience to the outdoor world. Having worked alongside world-class chefs and served as a sommelier, he now applies that culinary expertise to hunting, fishing, and camp cooking across the American West. Based in Texas, he bridges the gap between haute cuisine and authentic outdoor pursuits.
