Fish

Someday fish packages could have a microchip embedded in their wrapping. When the fish is correctly cooked in a microwave oven, the chip would turn the oven off. This, futurists predict, will insure perfectly cooked fish.Moreover, it could, I predict, give an entirely new meaning to the phrase "fish and chips."The prospect of having your fish boss around your oven was one of the predictions I came across while reading a white paper on the seafood in the next century. The paper was the distillation of opinions and seafood-in-the-sky prophesies that came out of a gathering of food experts.

Some scientists do their work using test tubes; others need 600-gallon, climate-controlled tanks filled with 3-foot-long fish.Such is the case with researchers from the Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) and the National Aquarium, who are sharing the recently opened Aquaculture Research Center in Baltimore.While the aquarium plans to begin a breeding program for ornamental tropical fish, COMB researchers are conducting research they hope will help Maryland's budding aquaculture industry grow fish for sale in restaurants.

Heart disease continues to be the No. 1 killer of both men and women in the U.S. Now here's a simple thing you can do to protect yourself. Eat some fish twice a week.Research suggests several ways fish makes your body work better so heart attacks don't happen.A big one is the now-familiar cholesterol story. Over many years, LDL cholesterol and other debris from your cells create gunk, called plaque, which gradually builds up and thickens the lining of your arteries. Slowly, arteries become stiff and less flexible.

Sight words are words your child recognizes readily without analysis. Sight word games should be geared to self-improvement rather than deciding a winner. Words can be chosen from papers your child brings home, word lists provided by the teacher or favorite books. Place these words on index cards and develop a file of sight vocabulary to use and review.For variety, try a game using words from "Make Way for Ducklings." Draw fish shapes on cardboard or index cards. Cut them out and write a word from the list on each fish.

The locations Piney Run: Pan fish, bass and channel cats are all keeping anglers busy. Large yellow perch and bluegills are taking trolled worms on spinners in the shallow water. Hit the edges of the hydrilla beds with plastics and surface lures to entice the bass. The cats are biting on worms, liver and cut bait. Prettyboy Reservoir: Guide Duke Nohe and his buddy, Joe Butta, only caught eight fish Wednesday, "but some fish," says Nohe. Working in the 20-foot zone along gravel bars and stump fields, Nohe caught four smallmouths.

Perhaps not since the snail darter defeated the Tellico Dam project in Tennessee have a few little fish created such a stir.The cameras were clicking when officials from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources dipped nets in the left fork of the Jabez Branch near Gambrills last Thursday and scooped up 18 baby trout -- the first born in the stream in more than six years. "This is a red-letter day," said Robert A. Bachman, director of DNR's Fish, Wildlife and Heritage Administration. "Christmas in March."

SKINNING IS PRACTICALLY a necessity if you want to take the "blues" out of large bluefish. However skinning smaller blues is practically impossible for anyone who isn't adept with a cleaning knife.The large blues of 10 pounds or more have left the Chesapeak for points farther up the coast, replaced by smaller ones of 1 1/2 to four pounds. It's generally considered that they taste best skinned, but separating these miniatures from their skin is difficult and messy.But, 10 years ago Howard Countian George Fiackos alerted thi writer to an easy solution, which came to mind the other day when I was about to start cleaning some fish.

Practice and preparation. Sounds like something a high school baseball or football coach might tell an incoming class of ninth-graders on the first day of workouts.But they also are words that Rick Clunn uses often when asked what keeps him at the top of his game, 21 years into the rat race that is professional bass fishing."Productive and enjoyable days fishing are based upon education and preparation," said Clunn, who has won the B.A.S.S. Masters Classic four times. "When you arrive, you must have a plan and a starting point already selected.

I have good news for you "anglers" concerning ongoing scientific efforts to make fish stupider.We need stupider fish because fishing is an important industry, one that pumps $867.4 million annually into the U.S. economy.Millions of Americans enjoy angling, although I am not one of them. My feeling is if you go fishing, you are running the risk that you will catch a fish. Mother Nature never intended this to happen, which is why she gave fish an outer covering that feels as though a big sick man named "Lester" has just blown his nose on it.Mother Nature intended for the human-fish encounter to occur in the restaurant environment, where the fish has been formed into a rectangle and covered with bread and fried until it could also be chicken.

WHAT WE NEED is someone to explain why humans chase fish, sometimes to the exclusion of all other activities, such as bathing, eating and interacting in a meaningful way with the opposite sex. You know the type. Heck, you might even be that type or a borderline case. Bobbing in a wind-whipped, whitecap-covered Chesapeake Bay without another boat in sight. Refusing to quit even though there's a fish hook stuck in your neck. Standing below the Conowingo Dam in ancient waders that let in more water than they keep out. Monte Burke's new book takes the boy-and-fish infatuation to a Code Red level, although every angler can probably see a bit of himself in the characters.