A relative novice, Carl Fisher, the bearded L.A. sound man ("Hey, my name is Fisher!), hooks the first black bass keeper (a 13¾-incher; legal size is 12 inches).
He then proceeds to haul in five or six more, losing count.
McCarthy lands the biggest bass, a bit over 19 inches.
But not the biggest fish: His wife, Sharon, soon hooks a mighty fluke - the elusive fluke! - flat as a flapjack and, at 22 inches, heavy enough to require the net.
A few bony sea robins - odd-looking fish the size of a dove, fins flared laterally like wings - are kept to flavor a sauce.
In no time, there's plenty in the cooler for a generous dinner.
Feury surveys the chest of ice back at Fork, lifting out a bass stiff with rigor mortis: "It's still almost alive," he says, showing how to scale and gut it to the one couple - foodies Chip and Lynn Brickman- who decide to avail themselves of this rather graphic part of the program.
By 7 p.m., the chef has his ducks in a row: For a starter (in homage to the mackerel used as bait) he has grilled some silvery Spanish mackerel that McCarthy dropped off the night before. Fuery had lightly salt-cured it, smoked it briefly over dried rosemary sprigs in a Weber out back, slicked it with Tuscan olive oil from Fork co-owner Roberto Sella's own olive grove, and sauced with a gently tangy baby carrot escabeche.
Next come slick bulbs of fork-tender calamari - McCarthy had baited his lines with squid - stuffed with chorizo and oregano, and roasted eggplant.
And the menu addendum: blocks of Sharon McCarthy's pan-roasted fluke, firm and mild, cooked in a saffron bouillabaisse broth flavored with the bony sea robins, then stacked over a bed of leeks and fennel, and rich heirloom tomatoes that had been slow-roasted all night over the oven's soft pilot light.
Ah, then the whole, succulently moist, silky-textured black sea bass, split and stuffed with lemon slices and herbs, roasted on a bed of fennel fronds, then paired with a sublime iman bayaldi, which is like the ratatouille of the gods, and a lush, green parsley coulis.
"Unfortunately," Feury intoned, as the party of 20 toasted him at the candle-lit chef's table at Fork: Etc., the bistro's lovely, prepared-foods wing, "we didn't catch any Key limes today. But that's what's for dessert - Key lime chiffon pie ."
But who was getting technical? The crew members had caught the lion's share of their supper.
They'd had it on the plate a little over seven hours out of the Atlantic.
And that's how they knew - for one of the few times in their lives - just exactly how fresh it was.
Contact columnist Rick Nichols at 215-854-2715 or rnichols@phillynews.com.
Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/ricknichols.
