According to wikipedia, it is a relative of the smelts and is placed in the order Osmeriformes. Native to the Palearctic ecozone, it occurs in rivers, lakes, and coastal waters of western HokkaidÅ in Japan southward to the Korean Peninsula, China, and Taiwan.
And it's eaten WHOLE. (x_x)
It's quite popular here, showing up on menus, at festivals, and with an unnerving frequency in my school lunch.
There are a few ways to catch ayu, like fly fishing, Cormorant fishing (Gifu City is actually quite famous for this), and by taking advantage of their territorial behavior using a decoy, known as ayu-no-tomozuri.
The decoy method involves the use of a captive ayu and a long fishing rod. And by long I do mean loooooooooong
Last month I had the opportunity to try my hand at catching ayu. We went to a river in the town of Kamitakara; which, though technically in Takayama, lies about an hour's drive north of the city (^_^)b
A friend of a friend is an avid ayu fisherman and was kind enough to provide us with rods and tackle, and captive ayu. And seeing as I've never been able to skewer minnows or worms, let alone hand-sized fish, he also bait the hooks for us too ^^
It's actually a fairly cruel process - the bait ayu is attached to the line by the mouth and also has a second, free-swinging hook that is attached to it's back end.
so close to freedom...
You then introduce the decoy into areas likely to have ayu and wait for one to attack the intruding fish and hook itself.
It's kind of an interesting process. My only prior experience involving the use of live bait has only been with small creatures (like minnows). You can't feel them on the end of the line, so the second you feel it pull you know you've got something. But in this situation, since there's already one live ayu on the hook, it pulls and wiggles around as the fish goes here and there on the end of it. I was tricked more than once into thinking I had something.
In the end, I managed to hook three, and catch two. One lucky little guy got away from me the one time I was left to myself, while our fisherman was off helping my friend, ha ha ha
And the two fish I did catch? Presents to our fisherman for showing us a great time. Cause I sure as hell wasn't going to eat them myself! =D
4 comments:
Yet again, awesome post Jen. Hey, why don't I have your email address?
you don't have it? hmmmm. we'll have to remedy that ;)
so... what d'yer catch the first Ayu with? :fallsoverlaughing:
eaten whole? damn sparky, I can't even eat fish from a can... as much as I like fishing, I dun eat them. I always throw them back...
I asked that same question, and the answer is you can catch them one of the other two methods or buy some at the store =D
ironically enough, this was on the lunch menu today too :(
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