The fish hit like a hammer. One second I was falling asleep on the Sacramento River with a rod in my hand, the next I was gripping the reel for dear life, my line was stripping away, and the unseen lure was being shaken the way a dog shakes a rat. Typical striper.

Fully awake now, I let the fish run. It tore off 100 feet of line before I could begin to reel it toward the boat. A good fish. Not a great one, but definitely an eater.

Striped bass are something special. The big ones are loners, and they are the kind of fish you tend to remember catching--a string of memorable stripers has bookmarked the chapters of my life the way no other fish has done. And it's not just the catching: these fish are equally memorable at the table.

Stripers also occupy a unique position among the myriad fish Californians catch and eat: it is the only major food fish in the state caught solely by recreational anglers. There has not been a commercial striped bass fishery here since the Depression. That has not stopped anglers from catching more than 283 metric tons of striped bass in 2005, behind only salmon and lingcod.

So here I was, doing my best to add another five pounds or so to this year's catch. I lowered the rod tip to gain line as I reeled the striper closer. This sort of lean-and-reel technique would be the only option for a big bass, which can grow beyond 100 pounds; reeling in a fish that huge is like dragging in an open umbrella from the handle. But this fish was a schoolie, a smaller striper that still spent time with its colleagues. Still, I wanted to get the fish into the boat quickly because the eating quality of a tired fish suffers compared with one that was swiftly dispatched.

And is it that eating quality which causes so many to chase striped bass.

Arguments rage among anglers as to which fish is the finest at table. Some wax poetic over salmon. Others moon over halibut. Char have their aficionados, as do walleye, yellow perch, and tuna. I retire quietly from such fights: how can I choose one fish when so many taste so fine? But if pressed, I'd say striped bass has earned its place among the few fish I'd rather not live without.

Describing the flavor of fish is not easy. "Clean" is a universal hallmark of good fish, and my suspicion is that this nebulous flavor comes from fish whose oils have not yet begun to turn rancid. Unlike terrestrial meats, fish will deteriorate rapidly even in a fridge; you need to pack a fish on ice to store it in the refrigerator for a few days. But the flavor of one fish differs from another mostly in terms of saltiness, texture (is the flake coarse or fine?), oiliness, and firmness. Diet and exercise affect all of these.

Stripers live the Greek ideal of all things in moderation. They eat a varied diet of shrimp, shellfish, and other fish, and they are neither lurking ambush killers nor long-swimming wolfpack hunters like tuna. They have the firmness of a shellfish-eater, the clean flavor of an eater of clams and other mollusks, and the meatiness of a fish-eater. Stripers are firm but not so much as halibut or eels, and they are meaty, but so much as sturgeon or swordfish. It is white meat, but with enough of the fishier-flavored dark meat along the lateral line to make it interesting. And striped bass also possess, in huge amounts, that savory zephyr the Japanese call umami.

I have batter fried them. Dredged them in flour and sautéed them in olive oil. Steamed them with veggies. Grilled them over hardwoods. Barbecued them slowly over a smoky fire. Baked them whole, stuffed like a turkey. I've even eaten them raw.

Any East Coast fish-eater knows the striper well; commercial fishermen there have been keeping markets supplied with striped bass as long as fish markets have been around. I ate them as a boy in New Jersey. The fish is native to the Atlantic, and was prized by the Lenape Indians who met the Dutch in New Amsterdam. Vast spawning runs of striped bass stormed up the Hudson, the Susquehanna, the Connecticut, and the Potomac every spring as part of a natural progression of herring, then shad, then stripers. And some of these fish were huge: four centuries ago, stripers larger than 100 pounds were common.

New Englanders valued the striped bass so much they used lobster as bait to catch them.

They remain an obsession to many anglers from North Carolina to Gloucester, much the same way anglers view muskellunge in the upper Midwest and steelhead trout here in Northern California.

That obsession crossed the Continental Divide in 1879, when a few hundred younglings were planted into the Carquinez Straits near Martinez. Striped bass found few enemies in the Delta or the rivers that fed the estuary, and within a few decades, a commercial fishery arose that lasted until recreational anglers convinced the state legislature to close it in 1935.

Striper populations have ebbed and flowed like the tides since then. Recently they have been pressured by the massive water pumping for agriculture in the southern San Joaquin Valley that has disrupted the normal flows of the Delta. But there are still plenty of fish swimming around Sacramento.

The fish on the end of my line was swimming south of Rio Vista in the Delta. I had it alongside the boat now, and while it was no 100-pounder, the fish was definitely larger than the 18-inch minimum. Our guide, John Harrison, netted the fish. We held it up for a moment before putting it into the live well. Stripers have the regular features of a Hollywood starlet; in form, they look like what your mind's eye conjures when you think "fish." Silvery, graceful and sleek, stripers come complete with a set of olive racing stripes streaming from the back of their heads.

This one would be dinner. It would join the growing school of stripers I've devoured over the years. I cannot say just how large that school is--a hundred? Two? My first striped bass is lost to time, but as long as I've been fishing, stripers have always been there.

The largest was a 52-pound monster caught on a live eel in the strong current running out of Fire Island Inlet one night off Long Island, New York. It was an ecstatic moment, as I was a poor college student and needed the meat. This fish fed me for more than a month.

Years later in Virginia, I was forced to work on Christmas Day and so had to spend Christmas Eve away from my family. I had caught a striper in the Rappahannock River the day before, and as a little celebration, I stuffed it with a chestnut and cranberry dressing, slathered it in butter, and baked it for a coworker who also had to work Christmas. He brought bottle of old port and a jug of eggnog made from George Washington's personal recipe. It was a fine feast, one Old George might have enjoyed himself.

Then there was the 20-pound striper I finessed onto a Block Island beach using gossamer line on a lightweight spinning rod. That fish ran me up and down the shoreline for nearly 40 minutes, until it finally submitted and allowed me to land it for dinner. I grilled it and served the fish to my sister, my mother, and my wife--that meal was a moment of peace at a time when my marriage had all but collapsed.

In happier times, I fished the salt marshes of Cape May, New Jersey, for stripers with my father on a humid June evening. It was a spectacular bite. We threw topwater lures normally meant for largemouth bass at the edges of the reeds, and the stripers leaped out of the water to attack the lures the way white sharks ambush seals off South Africa. We soon caught our limits and laughed and talked and drank cheap beer until the dawn broke. It remains my finest evening.

Now I am in California, a world 3,000 miles from the other markers, the other stripers in my life. Their presence here comforts me, gives me a link to my Eastern past and a punctuation point to this chapter of my story. As for that striper I caught in Rio Vista? I sautéed it simply in olive oil and served with a wedge of lemon and a few spears of asparagus grown in Holt, just a few miles from where we were fishing.

Life is good.

A former commercial fisherman and line cook, Hank Shaw has written for Gastronomica, The Art of Eating, and Meatpaper. He is the fish and seafood cooking writer for the New York Times Company's About.com. He runs a seafood blog at fishcooking.about.com, as well as a personal blog, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, at www.honest-food-net.

Where to Find Stripers

Around Town

No fish market will have stripers in stock, but here are two places in the Sacramento area where you can special order striped bass:

Fins Market and Grill

8525 Madison Avenue

Fair Oaks, CA 95628

916-967-0954

Little Fish Co. at Persimmon Café

415 A Street

Lincoln, CA 95648

916-267-4441

On the Internet

This fish is farmed in San Diego:

www.farm-2-market.com/products/bass.html

Catch Your Own

I have personally fished with all four of these guides and had a great time with each of them. Each specializes in various areas of the region, but each knows how to catch striped bass.

John Harrison

Five Rivers Guide Service

http://fiveriversguideservice.com

916-806-3119

Kevin Brock

Fishing Guide

www.fishkevinbrock.com

800-995-5543

Emeryville Sportfishing

www.emeryvillesportfishing.com

800-575-9944

Barry and Diana Canevaro

The Fish Hookers

www.fishhookers.com

916-777-6498