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Everyone knows that fish are slimy. There is even a kind of fish called a slime eel. If you put a slime eel in a bucket of water, in a short while you have a bucket of gelatinous slime. Slime eels are sometimes in demand for their skins. Properly tanned they look just like alligator or snake and are used to make boots, purses, belts, et cetera. So the next time you see a pair of snakeskin boots, think slime.

The other thing that most people don’t seem to realize is that fish slime is not water-soluble. In her wisdom, Mother Nature decided to cover fish with a wonderful see through gel that makes the bearer hard to catch and harder to hold. But above all else, it keeps them from getting wet. It’s waterproof. You really only have to think about it for a few minutes before the wisdom in this becomes obvious. I mean, if ducks’ ass weren’t watertight, they’d all fill up and sink backwards. If fish weren’t waterproof, they’d dissolve before our very eyes. The only way to save them would be to get them to dry land as fast as possible, and that in itself would create a whole new set of problems.

One of the other things that Mother Nature decided was that slime should attach easily to any other surface, and that once attached, it should stick like crazy glue. Modern chemistry has yet to equal this marvel of tenacity. Once you come in contact with fish slime, it spreads itself over your whole body. It sticks like glue, and it can’t be washed off.

Fish scales and fish slime have a natural affinity for one another. So once you’re encased in slime, you just naturally attract every loose fish scale in your area. In our case, that area is a fishboat with a seemingly endless supply of loose scales in every nook and cranny (including my own). There is also a strange technical point to be made here; the stickiest slime is on herring, but the most tenacious scales are on humpies.

Anyhow, two weeks and several showers after a successful fishing trip (meaning lots and lots of slime and scales), I’m sitting at a friend’s house having a cup of coffee. As I reach for the milk, a fine spray of fish scales flies from my wrist (or from between my fingers) and decorates the shiny tabletop. Even nature’s best glue eventually biodegrades, and for the next few days I will shed like a maple in October. In our community the sensitive host will simply run a damp cloth in your wake and say something like, “Good trip, eh?” In other, more civilized climes, it’s more likely that your host will immediately have herself checked for leprosy, and neglect to invite you back for another visit.

When we first moved to Malcolm Island, the house we rented didn’t have running water, so we hauled drinking water in buckets from town and took showers at a place built for fishermen. It was in the back of a laundromat and it had an endless supply of hot water. The maintenance on the place wasn’t all that good, but the owner was nice, so we took to cleaning the place up a bit before we went in. We could do the floor and walls pretty well with the tools on hand, but the shower curtain was beyond help. No matter what we did to it, it looked and felt slimy. We took to calling it the mucus-lined shower, but we used it anyway. As it turned out, that old shower curtain was like Samson’s hair—when it finally went to tatters, the shower was closed and never reopened.

When you’ve been fishing for a few weeks, you can usually clean yourself well enough to prevent an outbreak of bubonic plague, but the idea of a good hot shower starts sounding pretty nice. First thing I did on tying up in Port Hardy was to phone around and find out which places offered shower facilities. We located one nearby, packed up our clean clothing, and walked to the hotel. The shower room was tiny. There was a chair, a light bulb and a single bed. The shower in the bathroom was one of the old cast-cement types and it hadn’t seen any paint for a long while, but we didn’t care much—at least hot water came out of the shower head.

My wife took her turn first while I fell asleep in the chair. It seemed like she was in there forever, but eventually I got my turn. The feel of clean, dry clothes after a long period without should be ranked right up there with sex and chocolate. I had dumped my fresh clothing on the bed and now savoured the touch of each clean piece as I put it on.

I was just donning the last of my things when a movement on the bed caught my eye. A closer look revealed more movement. A full scrutiny of the bed cover showed it to be a seething mass of small dark bugs. They were all going about their buggy business in an energetic way, and judging by their numbers had been doing so for quite some time. What I had taken for worn spots on the cover turned out to be seasonal migration routes: spring over by the window, autumn in the pillow and winter between the mattresses. I sincerely hoped that my clothing, which I had so carelessly dumped on the bed, had not blocked any major arterial highways or caused any detours.

When we returned the key to the desk, the lady made some happy comment about our feeling better now. She turned white and began to shake when we told her about the extra guests in the room. We were in such a hurry to get to a drug store that we didn’t even think to ask for our money back or for the hotel to buy us the two bottles of Nix that we quickly acquired.

So then it was back to the boat. We stripped off on deck and put everything that had been in the room in a garbage bag. We spread out a big garbage bag on the floor and put a bucket of warm water at the centre. Then we stood on the bag and pulled it up around our necks. Inside the bag it was easy to wash and rinse ourselves without flooding the cabin. Once clean we were off to the laundromat. At the laundromat I wished that I could get into the churning suds myself. The itching had started within moments of discovering the bugs—an obvious psychological effect, which I expected to run its course in a matter of one or two hours. Three days later it was still going strong, and it was spreading. Everyone who heard the story felt the sudden need to scratch. Behind the ears and just under the tops of your socks seemed to be the most affected areas. One friend twenty miles away got it via the radio.

Just trying to write this story has made me acutely aware of crawling sensations on my legs and scalp. It will be interesting to see if it can be spread by means of the printed page.

Excerpt from Fried Eggs and Fish Scales, by Jon Taylor. © 2024. Appears with the permission of the publisher, Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.

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Learn more about Fried Eggs and Fish Scales: 

Capturing the “rough but reasonable” freedom of Malcolm Island, situated off the northeast shore of Vancouver Island, Jon Taylor recounts the bizarre but enticing lifestyle of a fisherman and his remote community—“haywire tightwads” for skippers, rotten fish in the hold that become “three thousand humpies in a warm, pink soup,” and the kind of integrity you don’t often see.

Jon Taylor’s family history on Malcolm Island extends back to 1917, when Taylor’s Finnish grandparents planned to move to the community of Sointula, to live among fellow expats who shared a language and a dream. However, Taylor recounts, upon seeing the island they promptly changed their minds and moved to Cuba. Taylor himself moved to Malcolm Island in 1976 and became a steadfast resident, embracing the fishboat life, for better or worse, aboard seiners, gillnetters and his own troller. Taylor captures a classic but now-disappearing way of life in its heyday with his vibrant and amusing vignettes.