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What started as a gift to my father has turned into a lifelong obsession with one of the most sought-after fish species on the planet. Interestingly enough, on that first fishing trip to Lake Michigan, my dad, friends, and I only caught one of these fish, and I wasn’t the one who landed them.

But as soon as I saw the size and beauty of a Chinook salmon up close, I knew that I wanted to be in close relations with this and other salmon species. Fast forward to this past summer, and my freezer is still full of these amazing and beautiful creatures.

The 2025 fishing season was one of my best on record. I fished the Great Lakes four times and the Gulf of Mexico, harvesting several of my favorite saltwater species, the red snapper. As usual, the catching was only the beginning of the fishing adventure, and I’ve been thinking and practicing a ton about the best ways to process, preserve, and cook my harvest.

Much more on that in a bit, but for now, let’s talk statistics. Two of my Great Lakes fishing trips last summer were to northern Lake Michigan, more specifically Traverse Bay. I had never been to the area before a camping trip earlier that summer, and was struck by how utterly gorgeous the land was. The waters were so incredibly clear, and the terrain was surprisingly hilly for Michigan.

The first outing included my father, son, and dear friend/hunting buddy, Ashley. Ashley and my son had never been charter fishing, so I was excited to be a part of their first experience doing this type of fishing. My dad and I had taken many such trips over the years, but this was the first time three generations of our family had been on a boat fishing together.

We did work.

Our captain, Jordan Young, told us that the morning bite turns on at about 6:45, and it turns on hard. He wasn’t lying. At 6:42, we had our first bite, and by 8:15, we had hooked seven Chinook and landed four. We would catch one more salmon, a coho (a smaller and, in my opinion, tastier species), and a Lake trout in the remaining three hours on the water.

The biggest fish was a 35-inch, 17lb male that took my dad nearly 30 minutes to land.

The state record Chinook salmon is a 48lb monster, which is entirely impossible for me to imagine trying to land, given how hard it was to land a fish three times less massive.

I had so much fun on this first trip that I went back three weeks later with another dear friend and wild food enthusiast, Brandon. This trip was during the peak salmon run, when the fish migrate up the Boardman River to spawn inland. We began fishing around the same time and were back on shore before noon with six beautiful chinook, including an 18lb male that Brandon landed at around 7:30.

It was indeed a summer of salmon.

Quite simply, dry aging concentrates flavor. The next time you’re at a restaurant that serves whole steaks, check the menu or ask your server if they dry-age their meat. If the establishment serves both dry-aged and non-dry-aged steaks, a buck gets ten, the former is pricer than the latter.

The reason dry-aged animal flesh is more expensive is that the process takes time and a controlled environment. Microorganisms like mold and bacteria enjoy fish just as much as we do, so preventing them from feasting is incredibly important. The reason you have a fridge is to prevent tiny food competitors from consuming what we intend for ourselves.

When you dry-age meat, you allow the moisture of the flesh to dissipate, which concentrates more of the solids and thus intensifies the natural flavors. The proteins in the muscle tissue also have more time to break down, so the texture of the product changes in ways you simply can’t experience with fresh fish.

But isn’t fresh fish the safest type of fish?

Why does Red Lobster have a separate fresh fish menu that’s more expensive?

Why would I ever buy “aged fish” from the store?

Aren’t I just asking to get sick?

All good questions. The rewards of dry-aged fish are all in the details, so let’s cover that next.

Dry-aging fish at home begins with how you process your catch on the water.

Blood and viscera are the enemies of dry-aged fish. Blood carries nutrients in solution, so that our cells can access said nutrients readily. And if our cells can take advantage of the nutrient milkshake flowing through our veins, so can other cellular organisms. Our immune systems keep unwanted microbes at bay, but when an organism dies, those systems shut down.

The most effective method to humanely kill fish and get them ready for consumption is the Ikejime method. This is something I’ve covered a bunch in my content, but in case you’re new to this topic, the ikejime method is a four-step process of killing fish so that their flesh remains at the highest quality.

The ikejime method is not a must for dry-aging fish, but killing your catch quickly and draining as much blood from their bodies as possible within the first several minutes is crucial to set yourself up for what comes next.

The only thing that spoils fish faster than blood in a dead body is guts in a dead body. Part of the ikejime method requires that, after the brain spike and blood drain, you submerge the fish in ice water to cool their body down. This step is to buy you time before removing the innards.

On the first trip to Traverse Bay, I contemplated leaving all of our fish in the ice bath cooler for the 4-hour drive home. I ditched that idea and gutted the fish at the dock, and I’m glad I made that choice. The last thing I wanted to do after driving four hours home after a long day of fishing was gut a bunch of fish.

Removing the innards of a fish is pretty straightforward and fairly forgiving. Piercing the stomach or intestines is not nearly as problematic as doing so on a deer, and thankfully, fish don’t have urinary bladders.

The thing that I see a lot of people miss, though, when gutting fish is failing to remove the blood in the primary blood vessels of the fish, just underneath the spine. A tremendous amount of blood congealed in a fish’s spinal blood vessels that must be removed to preserve the flesh well. Do not skip this step!

The upside of gutting fish thoroughly at the dock is that you can keep your fish whole in a cooler of ice for several days before filleting them. If you have to travel with your catch, this is probably something you’ll want to do as I did on both trips “up north”. Having the right cooler is key, though.

Filleting fish is relatively straightforward, as long as you have a sharp knife and a large working surface. Two tools I find essential for the job — especially with larger fish — are a squeegy and a brush. Fish are slimy, and working with a slimy fish and a sharp knife can be dangerous. I used the small brush to remove the slime from the fish skin and the squeegy to wipe my working surface clean. A total game-changer for do-it-yourself fish mongering.

NOW, you are ready to dry age your catch! The most important aspect of dry-aging is getting as much air to your product as possible. The Dry-Age Fish Guy dry-ages his fish whole in fancy dry-aging chambers (#fishgoals) while hanging them by a hook. I don’t (yet) have that setup, so I dry-age my fish in the pullout drawer of my garage fridge.

I place the fillets on a drying rack nested inside a half-sheet pan with the skin side down. Any temperature between 40 and 32 degrees will work, and given that refrigerators are fairly dry environments, your fish can dry-age for up to two weeks.

But what about the fishy smell? Won’t dry-aging make my fridge smell super fishy?

One of the most remarkable things I discovered about putting in the work to process my fish thoroughly, using the ikejime method, careful gutting, and de-sliming, is that the super fishy smell we associate with fish is either the result of high densities of fish or halfway spoiled fish.

After ten days of dry aging, my salmon fillets smelled pleasantly fresh and mild. I was blown away. But I had to put in the work to make that happen.

After the dry-aging process is done, reach for your vacuum sealer, and seal those precious, hard-earned fillets and freeze what you don’t eat immediately.

There’s simply no comparison between dry-aged fish and fresh fish. If you enjoy the process of putting fish on the table, then you owe it to yourself to dry-age your catch. It’s life-changing.

I think I’ve talked enough about fish, except for one point. Dr. Zoe Todd gave a talk (you can watch it above) at my former institution that put fish relatives in perspective for me. She talked about how fish survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other planetary catastrophies, but Anti-Indigenous Civilizations are threatening their survival like nothing before.

Fish relatives are beyond precious and essential to humanity. Part of the work I do in this newsletter and other content is to raise awareness and, hopefully, appreciation for the roles and responsibilities we play and owe each other.

I hope that came through to you in this week’s post!

I’ve wanted to be the type of person who writes in a journal consistently since I was a kid. And since that time, I’ve struggled to meet a daily writing expectation, until now.

The formula I use comes from one of my favorite creators, Maurice Moves. You can watch that video here:

But I recently realized that the tools he recommended are a big part of why I’ve been able to be consistent.

The Traveler’s Notebook, paper, and fountain pen by Lamy are just as important to the reason I love to write every day as is the satisfaction of maintaining the habit. I love the notebook system so much that I’m scheming how to fly through Tokyo Narita airport on my next visit to India, just so I can stop at the Traveler’s store in the international terminal and buy all the things.

The video version of last week’s newsletter is now live on my channel. Drop a comment and let’s continue the conversation!