Archive for the ‘Fish’ Category

Yes, episode 1. Don’t get it? Don’t blame you.

This series [Field to Fire] is going to strictly be about exploring regional ingredients, and preparing them a couple ways outdoors. Same format. Every time. I liked the idea, but a major problem with it is that it excluded other fun content that I’d normally shoot and get involved with. So rather than kevinTV being one ‘thing’, it now is multiple ‘things’. Multiple ‘shows’. This will be one of them. More about this switch-up here.

Instagram feed watchers have been witness to my posts about ice fishing. Action went from absolutely dead in Dec/Jan to limiting out in an hour in late Feb, so I had some whitefish to work with for this episode. They’re a strange species – one that I had no experience with until lately. I hardly feel bad about it though, as while showing off some instagram photos recently to chefs, I got some questions about what species they were. They just aren’t solidly part of our food culture beyond certain niche pockets. Hence my interest in featuring them. Many more ‘Field to Fire’ episodes on deck. Enjoy.

It strikes me as rather convenient that after a couple months of pork, game, and beef, nature’s thoughtful next step in seasonal food offering is some fresh fish. I’ll take it. Was out at Lac Ste Anne this time around as it was a convenient location for meeting Jeff Senger for a 8 hr business meeting. Between he and I we have 6 girls and 1 boy, so meetings at our homes is rather…inefficient. Ice fishing meeting. We’ve decided that these are a very good idea.

Action was seriously slow. Saw a couple pike, a couple pickerel, and a variety of sizes of whitefish – including some bigger than I’d ever seen, maybe 5-6lbs. Nothing landed on the ice. Such is hunting and fishing. Next time. Still a successful ice fishing meeting. Me sitting here writing to tell about it confirms that the ice is indeed thick enough to get out there, and we were far from the first. I would, however, be mindful of where the inlets and outlets are, as the ice tends to be considerably thinner there. There was some discussion about phobia of slow death in murky water. Who knew ice fishing was so hardcore? It is in a lot of ways. Go upon a big huge sheet of ice, drill a hole in it, risk your life a touch, and be willing to sit in seriously sub-zero for hour upon hour to MAYBE catch a fish. It’s kinda zen. I highly recommend it.

I’m looking forward to taking some folks out for Shovel & Fork’s Ice Fishing 101. Doing an interview tomorrow evening for CKUA about that one, actually.

I did something to deserve good luck in a former life. Or something. To deserve having really darn cool cousins that happen to be rad wild food lovers in one of the most beautiful places on the planet – and to be great friends with them to boot. It’d been 5 years since our last visit, and I was overdue for a seafood-fest. This visit really was a stark reminder of how seriously localized our food is – I think I’ve had crab once in those 5 years, for a good friend’s birthday. I think it had been the full 5 years since a spot prawn, oyster, or rock cod.

Our time there consisted as follows: Coffee. Drop prawn traps in the morning. Eat breakfast and figure out what the tides were doing. Fish for salmon on the flood tide, cod on the beginning of the ebb. Pull prawn traps, drop prawn traps. Eat. Visit. Sleep. Repeat. Mix it up here and there with some crab trap action, oyster collecting, foraging for huckleberries, and rowing. Loveliness. Hauling up lunker cod from the bottom is always fun, as is the anticipation of seeing what prawn pots will yield, but after a long winter of ice fishing, casting into schools of hundreds of pink salmon that you could see swim around you was a definite highlight.

It took me a lot of travel to realize that this spot on the planet is special for its epic natural beauty and wild food bounty. I’m glad I now get it, and appreciate it. I grew up adoring this place and these people, and still do. Not sure what else there is to say.

I’ve been a busy boy lately, so much cool stuff that I’m having a hard time keeping up. But I couldn’t not post about some lovely fish we caught today after a long day on the ice. Not much action, but any day taking home fish is a good day for me, no matter how meagre the success. A perk to ice fishing I really do enjoy is the shooting the shit [can't do that when hunting so much], sharing some food and drink, etc – very social + you’re fishing.

I’m still enamoured with the whitefish. I had zero experience with them, despite having fished in Alberta my whole life. Just not in the lakes that had whitefish, apparently. I love their prehistoric salmon-esque look. They’re the best white fish there is for smoking as it’s oilier than perch or pike. And recently a friend and I did up some whitefish, scaled, skin-on, fried until the skin was crispy and it’s my new favorite. Lovely stuff.

Ice fishing season is coming to an end, quickly. In a couple weeks the season’s closed, and the lakes are already getting mucky around the edges, despite the 2-3′ of ice we fish on – the ice auger I was using today was up to the handles today before breaking through to water. Today was the first time ice fishing that the Canada geese were flying and honking about, a sure sign that winter is about to let go, and it’s on to growing season again.

One day, a biologist will explain to me why it is that when ice fishing, the vast majority of your catch are females, or ‘hens’. As an example, the last day I had a bunch of perch in my kitchen sink, 9 out of 9 were female. So what, you ask? Well what this means to me is that I have a surplus of roe. I’ve been cooking it, mostly, then realized that perhaps I am missing the boat on converting it into something unique and special: caviar. As I’ve since learned, caviar is simply brined fish eggs. That’s pretty simple. Most recipes online [Hank's got a nice post about caviar] were from trout or salmon roe. Perhaps freshwater fish roe would suck? Nope. I’ve had Golden Caviar [Whitefish caviar]. You can buy it commercially. I had to try it.

Turns out one of my favorite ice fishing spots is a mile or two away from Doef’s Greenhouses [Ep. 33]. I shot these two episodes in the same morning. A morning I will not soon forget, as I learned that hauling all my fishing camp gear and all of my camera gear for a km or two in deep snow is not a very good idea.

So I made up a 5% brine, threw it into my ice fishing bucket, and set out to give it a go.  I’d read that you should do it with super-fresh eggs. I can attest to the fact that they do deteriorate rapidly under refrigeration. Subsequent concept: go catch a fish with a DSLR on record, then kill and de-roe the fish right then and there on the ice. Can’t get much fresher than that. If you want to give this a go, you might want to read up on freezing freshwater fish prior to eating a raw preparation, so you can manage any bug-risks yourself. I’ve done my homework. So how was it? Watch the video.

Some Grant MacEwan University students were at my house the other day doing a photo doc about me, and my dad showed up with a box of 9 perch he’d caught. One of them was a giant 14.5″ long [the fish, not the student], and weighed 830g. The roe sac in the thing was giant, filling my open hand. In fact, every single one of them was female, and I removed all the roe sacs, adding up to a whopping half-kilo+ of perch roe. That’s a lot of roe. What on earth was I going to do with that much roe.

The man who guided me last month for Episode 26, and as a consequence got me hooked on this ice fishing thing [I've gone every single week since then], suggested frying the roe until crispy. Sounded interesting – I’d only ever cooked roe until just done. Crispy things, generally speaking, are tasty. As it turns out, fish eggs take a long time to get crispy – but they do. They also pop all over, many an egg making an escape from the pan like popcorn might do without a lid. I recommend covering the pan with a screen. I added a bit of red  onion, salt, and it definitely benefited from some pepper. Happened to have some re-fried mashed potato to go with it, and those to things get along. Fried eggs and potatoes, outside the box. The cous-cous-like fish eggs kind of end up like a fried breadcrumb topping, which is very pleasant. I would do this again, but would love to try it when there are fresh chives, parsley, maybe some chervil in the garden to finish and toss them with. More roe R&D is on its way soon.

When small, the photo on the left looks strikingly like a giant storm of doom shot from space. But it’s just an ice hole. An ice hole that hardly had a line put down it this morning, because, as I was fated to learn, small children have no attention span for ice fishing. Which is cool. I brought other stuff to do – books, sand toys, food, etc. No dice. My 3 year old complained the entire time, starting before arrival. Too cold, wanted mommy, wanted to go home. What I fail to understand is that on the way home, after essentially ruining everybody else’s morning complaining and crying, she declares: ‘I love ice fishing!’. I don’t understand.

The lake we went to is one that’s aerated and stocked with 40,000 trout a year. Figured that might result in some coolness. Nope. Not a bite. Although when you let the toddlers choose their lures, and spend zero time manning a line, you’re not exactly setting yourself up for success. To make things worse, unlike the last time I went ice fishing [Episode 26], we couldn’t see anything much beyond the hole. For whatever reason, the water’s murkier. I’ll choose a lake I can see into, every time. Just a matter of figuring which ones those are exactly. Thankfully the lake was close to the city, it was a beautiful morning, and all my new ice fishing gear worked out a treat. Couldn’t have sucked too bad, as I’m going to a different lake tomorrow. Without the 3-year-old.

I grew up hunting and gardening, abandoned them both as a young adult, then fell in love with both again later in life. Apparently, same goes for ice fishing. I have semi-fond memories of exhausty ski-doo-trailer rides on to the lake, sitting on a pail getting blasted by the elements, eye lashes freezing together, not catching much of anything, getting cold, and hearing stories about how at one time you caught way more and way bigger fish. When you’re a kid, those kind of stories are far from any form of consolation.

A friend of mine [who I met when shooting another video, coincidentally] invited me out ice fishing with him and a co-worker of his, and I just couldn’t say no. It’s January. In my usually busy food world, action had slowed. Gardening season was over. Hunting season was over. But ice fishing is just getting started. And I had a blast, despite it being a particularly slow day. Ice fishing is immeasurably more enjoyable when you’re protected from the elements in a shack, and more importantly, can see down the hole to watch the fish swim about. Add to that some camaraderie and wild-food action – I now get why folks enjoy it. I’m hooked. I want to go again.

Music courtesy of The AwesomeHots