When John Dunn, who produces Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, called me a few months ago, he said Zimmern would be headed to the Northwest. “Is there anything going on in the middle of September?”

The Travel Channel star couldn’t have picked a better time to sample the Columbia River.

We coordinated Zimmern’s trip to coincide with our annual fish camp at Peach Beach. Fish camp is where we celebrate good fishing, friends and food and not always in that order.

Two days before fish camp, I stumbled on a story that caught my attention.

For the last few months, I’ve been reading the works of Russell Annabel, whose articles for Sports Afield have been preserved in special editions from Safari Press. If you have not heard of him, take this recommendation from Ernest Hemingway. He called Annabel “the finest outdoor writer.”

In an article titled “His Majesty, the King,” Annabel mentioned eating king salmon milt, which is the sperm of the male salmon. We’ll let Annabel tell about it.

“It lies in the fish in two thick milk-white rolls, about a foot long and with the texture of fresh liver. Sliced and breaded or dusted with flour and fried in deep, smoking fat, it is something for epicures to write home about.”

At that moment, I knew what I would fix for my friends at fish camp.

I fished for bass Monday morning, and I pulled Jason Hambly aside and asked him to save the milt from a chinook.

When Hambly pulled his boat into camp Monday afternoon, he told me he had saved a male for me. I fired up a Camp Chef stove, sliced the milt into inch-long chunks, rolled them in an egg, milk and bread crumb mixture then fried them in oil. At the same time, I sliced some chunks of walleye and cooked them the same way.

Next, I sliced up squares of pepperjack cheese, draped them over the fried milt and topped each morsel with a slice of pickled jalapeno. A toothpick spear kept it all together.

There were three pieces of walleye on the plate prepared like the salmon sperm. I put the plate down in front of Fish Camp founder Ed Iman, handed him a spear of walleye and gobbled down a chunk of walleye myself.

We’d let the rest of the team sample salmon sperm. In 10 minutes, the plate was empty. Knowing that I was fishing with an epicure the next morning, I was satisfied with my culinary triumph.

When you fish for salmon on the mid-Columbia, the best hour of the day is the first hour. Tuesday morning, we started in the second hour because it is hard to get 17 cameramen, security guards, drivers and handlers breakfasted and caffeinated.

Josh Cooper would be our captain. Cooper is the northwest design and marketing manager for Cousins Rods. Like me, he has fished the Columbia since he was a little kid. But unlike me, he is one of the best salmon sticks on the river. On our boat we had two camera operators and a sound tech. A camera boat would follow us with the director and more camera operators. A drone operator and his team was staged on the Washington side of the river. The security guard stayed on the beach.

Zimmern is no slouch with a fishing rod. He hadn’t fished for Columbia River kings before, so we showed him the baits, hoping he wouldn’t eat them. We started with Pro-Cured salmon roe and sand shrimp tails on a Daiichi hook, with or without a Hevi-Bead on an Izor leader. We drizzled Pro-Cure Tuna on the mixture to sweeten things.

The procedure is to start at the top of the holding water and run the boat a little bit slower than the current, the baits “hovering” off the bottom. Zimmern’s rod had a Daiwa line-counter. On mine, I dropped the weight to the bottom then cranked up two turns.

Josh missed a fish; Andrew missed two and I missed one. The salmon sucks the bait in, then spits it right back out. Lower in the river, Cooper explained, they bite and hold on. Not so when they’ve seen all the baits between Astoria and Bonneville.

A miracle occurred: A fish bit and the hook stuck. Andrew bent the backbone of the rod against “His Majesty, the King” and in a few minutes, we had a 7-pounder in the boat. By its look, we called it a female. I figured, given Zimmern’s reputation, we would sample salmon eggs at our shore lunch.

Zimmern worked his magic with a fillet knife and when I walked back around to check on the preparations, I saw he had prepared several prime steaks and two long rolls of milt. Our fish was a male. My trick was about to be played on me.

Zimmern roasted lemons, eggplant and onions. He prepared rice and a reduction, and we finished the morning with a meal none of us will forget.

I’ll never throw milt away again. I’m saving it for you.

— Gary Lewis is the host of Frontier Unlimited TV and author of Fishing Central Oregon, Fishing Mount Hood Country, Hunting Oregon and other titles. Contact Gary at www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.