Paula Smith: Top of the Food Chain

I first met Paula Smith years ago when she emerged from the shadows of the shack on the Fletcher’s Boathouse dock to sell my buddy and I some herring. It wasn’t clear if she lived around the bottomlands of the Potomac but it was quickly clear that this lady, who seemed to love the f-bomb almost as much as her cigs, knew her stuff and didn’t suffer fools lightly. Upon first impression, talking to her was like going into a liquor store underage -- you just tried not to make a fool of yourself. 

““You should see us butcher a deer sometime. ... We got two freezers; they’re stocked.””

I would often see Paula around and she’d occasionally throw me a fishing tip, but it wasn’t until years later when I read profiles of Paula by Bill Heavey in Field & Stream and the Washington Post and another one in the Post  proclaiming that she is to the Potomac what Muir is to Yosemite or Thoreau is to Walden Pond that I gained a full appreciation for this local legend. 

While most of us hunt and fish for the sport or some time away from the modern grind, Paula truly lives off the land. Her freezer is stocked with fish and game, and she can identify just about any wild edible worth picking -- and it’s not just basic provisions, but fresh perch, venison loins, fat mallards, tender rabbit, ripe pawpaws, watercress, and serviceberries, to name a few of her favorites. She gets it all within minutes of downtown D.C. and right under the noses of the “fucking yuppies,” as she affectionately calls the joggers on the towpath.

Despite her best efforts, it doesn’t take long to crack Paula’s shell. She is surprisingly generous in answering questions on fishing and cooking, so long as the questions aren’t stupid -- and she’ll let you know if they are. She’s one of the toughest people I’ve met, and I have no doubt she could fend off a mountain lion or wayward hobo if she had to, but at the same time, she has some fiercely loyal long-time friends and a soft spot for certain critters. 

Paula likes to keep a low profile so the only pictures I’ll include here are already online, complements of the Post and Getty Images (Heavey has some good ones too in his profiles). I caught up with Paula on a late spring day toward the end of the shad and perch runs. Below are my questions in bold followed by her answers.

Emerging from the dock house shadows

52 Week Season: Thanks for your time, Paula. How was your day fishing? 

Paula Smith: We spent all day catching perch and cleaning perch. We didn’t catch a lot, only about 40 of them. That’s enough. It’s was raining all fucking day, what do you want?! How long do you want to stand out there and get rained on? 

I think that’s a lot! There’s not much better eating than perch. 

The white perch are very, very good to eat. You do not want to eat fish that live in the Potomac River year round but the migratory fish that come in from the ocean or the bay are a lot cleaner. When they come in, we try to make it a one-way trip to our frying pan. 

Are you mostly fishing for perch, or rockfish too?

Rockfish are OK, but rockfish don’t freeze for shit. If you get rockfish and you eat it fresh, it can taste really really good. But if you freeze it, you can't freeze it long, because if even if you eat it within a week or two, it’s not the same as fresh.

We eat fish year-round, and white perch freeze exceedingly well. If you freeze them properly, you can eat them for months and months and months. You can eat them six, seven month later and they taste good.

Do you target any other fish to eat and freeze? 

Fresh bluefish are delicious but they’re another one, they don’t freeze for shit. Now, snakeheads, if they are fresh and they are small -- you don’t want to eat a big one -- but if they are small and they are fresh and you grill them up, they are fantastic. But if you freeze them they taste like shit. You can eat herring too, but let me tell you, they are very aromatic when you cook them.

When's the best time to catch lots of perch and other fish like shad and rockfish at Fletchers?

It’s dependent on the river stages. The fish like a little bit of that flood because the river washing down motivates them to move on up. Sometimes we get huge floods – you know if you get a snowpack up in the mountains and you get warm days and it all fucking melts -- you can have monster floods. We like a little bit of a flood because it does two things. It motivates fish to come up, and it also puts debris in the water. When you have debris in the water, the commercial netters can’t put the nets out. 

Paula with pal Gordon Leisch with a doubler of perch

But it's all weather dependent. When the river gets a certain temperature, bam! they all spawn. Normally the peak period is toward the end of April, from like April 15 to the end of the month. But all you need is a couple of 80 or 90 degree days and they’re all gone. So I love the cold weather it keeps the fish around! It keeps the shad around; it keeps the perch around. 

Is this about the same time that wild edibles start getting good? I’ve heard that you can time the shad run by the serviceberries. 

The first berries that I go and get are the serviceberries. I love serviceberries -- they’re like blueberries with big seeds. There used to be wild strawberries all along the river years ago but there aren’t any anymore. My friend tells me 50 years ago they are freakin’ everywhere!  The second to third week in June around here is raspberry time, and then comes blackberry time… there’s always something to pick. 

Oh, and I love pawpaws, they’re delicious – they’re North America’s only tropical fruit. They kind of look like a mango, but they’re green. They taste like a custardy banana and they’re delicious.

How about wild edible veggies and mushrooms like morels?

You gotta be careful because people don’t know and they go out and they start eating fucking mushrooms and eating this and eating that, and they can get very sick and they can kill themselves. The average person is not that bright. So I do not recommend encouraging people to go out and look for mushrooms. 

What I would do is if they are seriously interested in mushrooms -- most people just want you take them out and get them some mushrooms -- there is a book called the Mushroom Bible and it’s like an 800 freakin’ page book. If you want to know mushrooms, you get that book, and you study it, and you look at mushrooms, and you do your spore prints before you even eat one. And once they know their mushrooms, they’re OK. But I would be very leery of recommending people to go get mushrooms. 

The other thing is, if you know anybody who has a morel spot, they’re never, ever going to tell anybody else. All you need is to tell the wrong person and all your shit is gone. 

How about greens? 

You got all kinds of green stuff coming up that’s edible. 

I love watercress. I love watercress. I have a couple of good spots for watercress and I get it all the time. This is the time to get it [in early May] because when it gets too hot, it gets tough and woody and nasty, but when its first coming up it’s delicate and it’s really, really good. I have a couple of spots, but I don’t tell people where my spots are. 

The other thing you got are stinging nettles, which are more nutritious than spinach. You also have mustard greens, which are not native to this country. They were brought over here by Europeans and they planted them and now they’re freakin’ everywhere. 

In the fall you’ve got nuts. You got walnuts; you got hickory nuts. If you’re into it, a lot of people gather the sweet acorns. You got apples to make your apple pies and shit. 

If you’re thinking of gathering food, you have to do it in the summertime and in the fall. Because in the wintertime, pickings are slim, baby. 

Do you hunt in the winter? 

We usually go out and get a couple of wild turkeys. We love wild turkey. It doesn’t taste anything like the butterball. It’s a totally different animal. They taste different, they look different – everything about ‘em. 

In the fall, you stock your freezer with venison, and then in the wintertime you get the geese. A lot of places have resident goose season. You do not want to get any migratory geese. They’re tough as nails, they taste shit!

Ha, I agree, geese are not my favorite… 

Migratory geese fly too much. You want the ones that hang out on the golf course and don’t go anywhere. We just cooked one up tonight that we got earlier in the year. Fantastic! It was like freakin’ roast beef. Tender, you can cut it with a butter knife. Migratory geese can be very, very tough. 

Same thing with the venison. We go through about five deer a year. We try to get the ones that are yearlings and usually don’t go past a four-point. We love button buck. Awwww, button buck is delicious. I can find all the trophy antlers I want when they drop them. 

What’s your favorite cut? 

It depends on what dish I’m making. You’re not going to believe this but we use all the meat from the lower legs. You know what we do with it? Chili. Most people throw that shit out. We take whole roast and we roast it up. We have tenderloin that we cut up into steaks. We take the neck and filet the neck and that makes a great crockpot. When we get a deer there’s very little that gets wasted, believe me. 

It sounds like you’ve got it down to a science. 

You should see us butcher a deer sometime. We are so freakin’ careful. We’re very hygienic, because I know how they do it in a slaughterhouse. You take it to a commercial processor and he just runs it through a fucking band saw. A commercial guy just wraps his shit in paper and doesn't give a fuck, you're lucky if its even labeled properly.

We de-bone everything on our venison because A, it takes it up less room, and B, anything that bad is gonna be in the bones and the ligaments. Any problems with the animals -- that’s where it comes from --nerve tissue and bone tissues. 

The only thing we do not de-bone is the shoulder because we cook that up as a pot roast. We take the whole shoulder blade and dump it in and cook it with potatoes, carrots, whatever you want, but everything else we de-bone. We got two freezers; they’re stocked.

How do you store all of this meat? Do you vacuum seal everything? 

We don’t do vacuum sealing. What we use is have the heavy-duty commercial food wrap. We take our meat, we wrap it up really well in that, and then what we do is we insulate it; we wrap it again in newspaper. Newspaper is a good insulator. And then what you do is you do what Micky D's does -- pack it in a nice cardboard box because that cardboard is an excellent insulator against freezer burn, too. So you have all these layers that protect against freezer burn. We got it down to a science because we live on this shit. 

Same thing with fish?

You have to freeze them in bags of water. Everything is skinless, boneless filets. Ninety percent of any contamination in any fish is in the skin, so you gotta filet it. You get the freezer bag and just put a little bit of salt in there -- not a lot because too much and your fish won't freeze -- and stick your filets in there and then fill the bag with ice-cold water and seal the bag. When you freeze ‘em in water, they never freezer burn. And then you stack ‘em up 10-15 bags in a cardboard box, and then you can pack em. 

How about ducks? 

I love ducks. I love ducks. The only problem is one duck is a meal for me. I like mallard, but if you want a really good duck, get the widgeons. Widgeons are good. They're tiny but they're delicious. The other thing that's really good is grouse. You don't get em locally but if go up in the mountains you can find em. 

You can get grouse in our region, really?

They like a little higher elevation, honey. You can find them in the Blue Ridge and places like that. They are freakin' delicious. Absolutely delicious. One thing you never want to eat is diving ducks. 

Agreed, but the one exception is canvasback. 

Canvasback are different; they eat a lot of grain and wild rice. But like merganser, don't even think about it. A coot, a ringneck? No. Don't eat any of those fuckin' things. They're nasty as shit. A lot of people go to the Eastern Shore and they shoot all of these diving ducks and I don’t know why because they taste like shit. Give me a good ole mallard any day of the week -- they taste delicious. 

How about wood ducks? I see them all the time around Fletchers. 

No! I don't mess with wood ducks; you know why? I think they’re too pretty, and I would never kill a wood duck. I know it sounds stupid and they taste good and they’re all over the place, but I’m sorry. I don’t feel guilty killing mallards but I would feel very guilty killing wood ducks -- they're my friends, haha. That's kind of how it is.