Loving fishing's romance

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Avid angler lived on sea legs

If Hemingway's classic "The Old Man and the Sea" were ever recast as the story of a woman, that woman would be Charlotte Fields.

Fields, a salty practitioner of rod and reel, wind and wave, revered the Atlantic's depths.

One day, she and her niece went fishing. When the tide shifted unexpectedly, their motor refused to start.

Fishmonger's, like most anglers, can hit or miss

Maybe it was the nautical bric-a-brac and sculpted fish of every conceivable stripe, both real and imaginary, that surrounded me. Or maybe it was just the fried flounder on my plate. Whatever the reason, it struck me as I dined at Fishmonger's recently that the search for a good restaurant meal is akin to fishing.

A good fisherman needs to be well-versed in the habits and habitat of his target catch, just as the diner improves his chances of getting a good meal by knowing a restaurant's history, pedigree and style.

Based on that, Fishmonger's would appear to be a most promising spot to drop a line. Owner Gary Bass (yes, it's his real name) opened the establishment in 1983, initially as a seafood market. Over the years, Fishmonger's evolved into a restaurant, and the market side of the business dwindled to a secondary role.

Taking a crack at Backfins is worth it

The oyster fork is a well-designed implement but hardly necessary for the enjoyment of a properly shucked oyster. Same goes for chopsticks in a sushi bar, mother-of-pearl caviar spoons and a number of other nice but nonessential tools for consuming seafood.

The wooden mallet that accompanies an order of blue crabs in a Chesapeake Bay crab shack (where it's poetically referred to as a knocker) -- that's another matter entirely. Just try cracking open the claw on a jumbo blue crab without one, and see how far you get. There's an almost feral pleasure, too, in thwacking the shell with the mallet and extracting the sweet flesh with your fingers.

It was a pleasure nearly impossible to come by in these parts until last summer, when Jim and John Jenkins opened Backfins Crabhouse in Wake Forest. The Jenkins brothers come from Maryland, where their family has been in the business for three decades. Their pedigree shows the moment you walk in the door and are transported to a crab shack on the Eastern Shore, right

Even with new course, Shuckers keeps its sea legs

When Kevin and Amy Marksberry bought Shucker's Oyster Bar in 2007, they knew they weren't just buying a restaurant. They also were getting a local landmark with a loyal following, some of whom had been making the trek to Wake Forest from Raleigh and points beyond since the restaurant's 1987 opening.

But the Marksberrys saw potential in change. Experienced restaurateurs in their own right (Kevin's career began in his father's seafood restaurant in North Myrtle Beach, and the couple operated Outback Steakhouse franchises in Raleigh for several years), they set about transforming Shucker's from rustic oyster bar to upscale casual seafood restaurant. At the same time, they wanted to preserve the spirit of the original.

By and large, they've succeeded. The new Shuckers Oyster Bar & Grill (the marketing-savvy owners tweaked the name, too) opened in June in spiffy new digs with a clean contemporary look. Subtle references to the restaurant's nautical heritage include abalone shell pendant lights and an oyster

Taste soft-shell crabs while you can

They look like big bugs on a plate, which is part of the fun for me, although others think they're critters from a Halloween movie.

I would pay well to see that flick -- "Invasion of the Soft-Shell Crabs" -- provided the subjects were offered as concession-stand snacks.

Some people mistakenly think that soft-shell crabs are some mutant crustacean. They're actually regular old blue crabs that have shed their shells but have not yet grown new ones. That means you can eat the entire crab, the whole thing.