A short meeting with menhaden

The plastic bag was marked, with sarcasm and black ink, as containing "premium menhaden." As if there are different grades of the most important fish in the sea.

The two specimens smelled of saltwater, the way fresh fish will. The eyes were clear and bright, the flesh firm to the touch.

Someone had been kind enough to gut them. The slit on both carcasses was ragged, surprisingly red at the edges. Bright silver skin was still clad in scales.

Not having the proper tool, I deployed a breadknife. A few clumsy strokes later and the fish were ready.

I was determined to cook them with no seasoning, so a cast-iron pan was shimmery with only olive oil. I wanted, simply, to know what menhaden taste like.

We've written about the fish for years, about the tension between the company that pulls them by the ton from the Chesapeake Bay and the legislators who protect Omega Protein from regulators. About the jobs that the company provides in the Reedville plant where it turns menhaden into fish meal and oil. About the environmentalists concerned about the impact industrial harvest is having on the ecosystem, and the folks who say the company is wrecking the sport fishery.

In almost everything I've ever seen written about menhaden, the author invariably describes the humble baitfish as being so bony, oily and smelly as to be inedible.

It wasn't always that way. The first folks on our shores were sustained by menhaden, which teemed in the bay. People actually had recipes for it.

I grew up eating whatever I could catch in the waters around my home and our family's cottage. If it swam - or just burrowed in the mud - chances are it would end up on the menu. But never menhaden (or bunker, or pogy or whatever it was called up north). I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't being entirely fair to the species.

My friends tried patiently to explain that people don't eat bait. I just as patiently explained that to many Italians, there's not much difference between lure and catch.

I suspect, in truth, that my indiscriminate palate comes from my mother's side and from her own taste for wild mussels with drawn butter, only one component of which could be gathered by her son on the Delaware coast.

Nevertheless, menhaden never came up. When the species grew into a major issue in the health of the Chesapeake, and when I began to see the baitfish consistently maligned (including by me), I became determined to at least try it.

I figured it couldn't possibly be that bad.

Finding fresh menhaden proved a challenge in itself. The folks from Omega were kind enough to offer, but that seemed like a conflict. My friends rarely ran into menhaden that was fresh enough to be worthwhile. Or, when they did find them, they forgot to not throw them back.

Until this week.

A good friend - who fishes for anything that swims - brought me the little bag along with some proper fillets of speckled trout, presumably to make up for the menhaden.

And so one day last week, I found myself at the stove, laying two seven-inch fish in a hot skillet. They spit and splattered for a few minutes, browning in spots on one side and then the other.

I laid them on a plate and took a picture. It was proof, I told myself, not stalling.

I prodded the fish with a fork and pulled at the side. The meat was dun-colored, like herring. It smelled rich, something like mullet. It tasted precisely like fresh fish.

Maybe a little like a sardine.

It was a little oily. A lot bony. It smelled like the bay. It was certainly not inedible. In fact, I'd even call it tasty. Perhaps it was premium, after all.

Donald Luzzatto is The Pilot's editorial page editor. Email: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com.