You see it all the time if you look for it.

"Our fish is fresh, never frozen".

Well, typically "fresh" fish does mean just that, it was never frozen. If the place you're at offers more information, reading up on the fish will find that at a "good" place, it's been out of the water for less than three days and never frozen.

With todays refrigeration techniques and whatnot, that's not bad. However, that totally fails to meet my criteria for Fresh Fish.

Was it alive in its natural habitat less than an hour ago? Yes? Then it's Fresh Fish. So if you put two and two together that boils down to...

"Don't make the fish travel to you, you travel to the fish."

Deep (hehe...pun)

Now, depending on where you live a quick jaunt to the coast (or down the street if you're so fortunate) for some fishing followed quickly by eating and you're totally set.

For those without access to the Ocean, hey...there are lakes, streams and the likes nearby I'm betting. If it's been years since you've been fishing or you've never been fishing, sounds like an adventure to me.

Of course, this only addresses the issue of fresh LOCAL fish. Sometimes, you want something...not so local.

So, how far have I gone for fresh fish? I'll give you two examples.

Pacific Silver Salmon

I started in Northeast Texas, drove across to West Texas, then to New Mexico, Arizona, across the Hoover Dam into Nevada (stopped at Vegas, a foodie amusement park), up to Reno, over to Tahoe, across to California, down to San Diego, up the coastal highway, through Oregon, finishing up in Washington State and stopping in Grey's Harbor (Westport, WA).

By the way, have I ever mentioned I've driven and eaten in all 48 contiguous U.S. States?

Sport fishing in Washington, off the coast, can be...problematic. At the time, they put a LOT of restrictions on you and likely still do.

You can't fish on the weekends
You can't use a barbed hook
You can only catch two fish
And a few others.

While there I caught a 56 pound King Salmon (Chinook Salmon), which took two hours to get in the boat since I was fighting him on 19 lbs. line. And while that fish became great salmon patties, salmon steaks and canned salmon (self canned).

The fish I really have in mind right now was a nice 6 lbs. Silver Salmon (Coho Salmon). Once he was dressed out (organs, intestines, gills and the like removed, body cavity cleaned), the interior of the body cavity was sprinkled with some coarse ground salt (just a touch).  The body cavity was then filled with thin sliced lemon, slices of orange, butter and whole sprigs of Dill. The outside of the salmon was treated with the butter as well. It was double wrapped (and sealed as much as possible) in Heavy Duty Reynolds Wrap Foil and placed on the BBQ over medium coals for about 25 minutes, then flip, and go about 15 more minutes.

Once you remove it and open it up (watch for the steam, it's HOT!), you want to remove the Lemon and Orange slices and the Dill sprigs. They will turn bitter if left too long.

Serve with a cool, sweet & tangy pickled red onion and cucumber salad along with some rice and you're in heaven.

Of course, you don't have to go to the Ocean to get Fresh Fish. However, in order to truly enjoy the fish, you should have to go through some sort of ordeal, it only seems fitting.

The Salmon's smaller cousin, the Trout is a beautiful, flavorful fish. Soft, light buttery meat makes it just divine. In fact, it's so good...I never order it.

Wait, huh?

You read right, I never order it, because I know the truth. I'm going to get some farm raised, white meat trout who has never had to work a day in his life and the quality has suffered tremendously for this. So that leads to my second fresh fish adventure...

Wild Brook Trout

Several hours of driving time for my starting point of West Texas found me in Southern Colorado. About 30 minutes west of Del Norte, CO in the San Juan National Forest, I turned off of the highway and continued on into the forest for another two hours on a dirt road.

From there, I stopped and spent the night with old friends. In the morning, we filled the pack saddles with the items we woud need (salt, flour, cooking utensils, bacon, a few watermelons, potatoes, couple of other items) and set off into the mountains.

Small switch back trails and narrow ledges with 500 ft drop offs made for breath taking panoramic views of the Rocky Mountains. High in the Aspen trees, with snow still tucked into the shadows here and there, we rode for the entire day.

Finally, we stopped at a small copse of trees, sheltered from the wind with soft beds of pine needles on the ground and setup tents. Right after the tents were setup, we saw to dessert. One of the small watermelons, which had come out of the garden earlier that week was wrapped and tied in rope, then dangled into the VERY Cold mountain stream to chill.

A stones throw from the tents was a small, still pond at the head of that fast running, thin mountain stream. When the sun hit just right, you could see the pond was thick with trout. Wild Brook Trout.

Now, to someone who has never had Wild Brook Trout but has been eating their trout from restaurants, the first thing you're going to notice as you clean the fish is the meat is pink, like Salmon.

The vigorous lifestyle of the Wild Brook Trout, constantly swimming in streams, fighting the current causes it to use it's muscles a LOT, especially compared to some pampered farm raised trout who gets fed without having to move.

That extra muscle use means it's lean and the meat is pink. Basically, it's like dark meat trout, if you will. The meat is more moist and tender.

Of course, where we were, almost no one has ever fished these waters. So the trout were not wary of fishermen and we could have literally caught hundreds. However, we only needed enough for dinner and that's all we caught.

Cleaned and dressed, salted and lightly peppered, they were skillet fried over an open fire until done. That very simple preparaton - no frills, no extras, is the Gold Standard of the perfect fish in my mind. Each time I close my eyes and bite into Chilean Sea Bass, Halibut with Lobster Newburg, Grilled Tilapia or the like, it's being compared to a plain old piece of pan fried, salt and peppered trout.

The trout usually wins. There's no substitute for fresh, at least not as I define fresh.

Obviously, you can't always plan on eating like this...and depending may not EVER be able to plan on eating like this. But, if you can fit it into your life, you should.

Adventures like these help calibrate your palate. You develop an appreciation for the best of things that helps you keep perspective on the rest of things.