The Gazette’s Sept. 30 article about false albacore repeated the “common knowledge” that these fish are inedible, something “that a hungry cat would walk away from.” Not everyone agrees. Way back in the Oct. 10, 1997 Gazette, Mark Alan Lovewell offered an albacore recipe from Shirley Craig. A few years later, the French-trained chef Marc Jean Berruet provided another, called “Marc Jean’s Edgartown Albacore.” And Stephen Sautner, in the New York Times, wrote, “Contrary to popular fishing lore, false albacore make fine eating.”

The secret: they must be immediately bled, filleted and iced. The same applies to bluefish, as Ron McKee was quoted in the Sept. 30 Gazette (“the key to a good bluefish is to bleed the fish immediately”). Many people find bluefish too strong tasting and albies inedible because often the fish are left to lie in the sun with blood and powerful digestive juices within. The last albie I caught was quickly bled, killed, gutted. It as good eating. Not bonito-good, but still tasty.

Laurence Pringle
West Nyack, N.Y.