On Thu, 15 Sep 2016 12:09:03 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2016 21:27:30 -0500, Don Foreman
wrote:
On Mon, 12 Sep 2016 21:27:46 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:
It's a car-topper rowboat that I can get up and down by myself; it
weighs 60 lb or maybe a little less if I decide to go for the
high-class imported plywood. It's mostly for pickerel fishing in the
ponds and cranberry bogs in the South Jersey Pine Barrens, and I may
use it in the tidal creeks that run into the NJ bays.
Gorgeous day on the lake today. Post-coldfront high blue sky, fish
shouldn't have been biting, but I can usually find a few fish.
We caught our supper again this afternoon, fish went direct from
cleaning table to pan. 6 nice sunnies, 1 little largemouth bass, one
northern pike. We were out for about 2 hours. Spent another pleasant
hour on a boat ride and recon looking for some new spots to try next
time.
Small pike (under 5 lb) actually taste better than walleye, and bass
and sunnies from this gin-clear Minnesota lake are very close behind.
Egg wash, panko breading, sautee in butter. YUM! Sides were sweet
corn, onion bread and cole slaw, accompanied by a very pleasant
Riesling.
One northern hit my lure like a runaway truck, broke my 20 lb test
line and cost me the RedEye Wiggler lure I bought just yesterday. He
got away ... this time ... we'll be back! I marked an X on the side
of the boat so I'll know exactly where to cast when we return.
Shop project: repaired a rod. An eyelet broke off when that northern
hit. My workbench was the fish cleaning table out on the deck by the
lake in the sunshine. Tools were some dacron fishing line, some super
glue and a sharp knife.
Finished reading a very good novel: "Cold Vengeance", Preston &
Child. I'll start another tomorrow.
Being retired's a bitch, but we soldier on bravely.
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Oh, boy, you make it sound great. I hope I enjoy mine nearly as much.
About the pike: Do you cut out the Y-shaped bones along the lateral
line, or do you cook them with the bones in, and eat around them?
I remove the Y-bones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJhLfWLRx8
I'm not very good at it yet. Need to catch more northerns.
We have northerns in a few lakes but we have pickerel -- redfins and
chain pickerel -- all over the place. The redfins are too small to eat
but I'll bring home a chain pickerel. I have a tiny Rapala filet knife
that I've sharpened like a razor and save just for removing a strip of
those bones (and the dark lateral line on bluefish).
BTW, I skin my sunfish. It seems to get rid of any muddy taste. I
filet them, too, which is like performing surgery. g
Me too. I'm getting good at it, can now filet a sunny in well under a
minute. Mary and I practiced catch 'n release but there'll be none
of that with Vicki. She likes to eat our catches!
A trick with sunnies: I don't bother with trying to follow the ribs to
get that last two grams of meat below the ribs. After cutting along
the dorsal fin to the spine and then sliding along the spine to the
tail, I make the usual transverse cut behind the gills but then make
a longitudinal cut just below the lateral line. Filet to that cut,
flip the filet and skin it, done with that side! No blood or gut
juices are spilled, meat never touches the cleaning table. If you
really miss that last two grams of meat, just catch another sunny! We
had more than enough for supper last night.
I didn't invent this technique; I learned it from my new friend Ron
who catches (and eats) several hundred sunnies per year. He lives on
a lake. Few weeks ago he had a fish fry in his back yard for "the
group", 42 people. We had plenty of fish. "The group" spun off from
a grief support group back in about 2013 or so. We've morphed into a
"movin' forward" group of good friends. Vicki and I were founders.
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