Since 2006 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has designated river herring a “species of concern.” That means the population has declined steeply, and in North Carolina along the Roanoke River, where eating river herring has long been a tradition, fishing frequently is suspended. So even if it is the right time of the year—January through April, when they swim upstream to spawn—there is no guarantee of herring for supper.
Leslie Gardner, who, with his wife, Sally, runs one of the last remaining herring shacks, the Cypress Grill, in Jamesville, North Carolina, explained to us that herring were a local staple well into the middle of the twentieth century. “Fish you catch in the river taste nothing like ones from the ocean,” he asserted. “By the time they get here, they are eating plankton from the river, and they taste better.” He recalled that once it was not uncommon for fishermen to net 500,000 or more of the gleaming silver sardines in a single day. Today, the population of the Roanoke River, which is a prime breeding area, is reserved strictly for sport fishermen and cannot be sold commercially.
Those lucky enough to find a herring shack like the Cypress Grill at a time when herring are available should know that these delicate fish, sheathed in cornmeal and fried, have a nomenclature of their own. Sunnyside up means a quick fry, yielding a fish that is as rich as butter itself, especially when accompanied by fried-crisp packets of opulent roe. On the other hand, cremated herring is fried long enough that the meat, crust, and even the little bones are a single, savory mass as rich as a hunk of well-done bacon.