Archive for the ‘Fishing’ Category

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.

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.

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

We caught another whack of fish today. Some teenie ling cod. P had a good day, catching a 13 lb ling [seen on left], and generally just catching most of the fish of the day. We kept a couple ling cod – one to brine and smoke, and one to freeze whole to enjoy at home.

We also took 4 nice rock cod, and had a very memorable dinner. G went through the trouble of gutting them, cutting out the gills, and scaling them. Other than that, they were whole, head on. She then corn starched them to avoid moisture, and deep fried them whole. Add to that a nice sweet and sour spread she made to top it. Wow. You can eat every bit of flesh cooked whole, which is awesome, but there’s more. I ate fins. The fins of the fish deep fried are crispy like crackling. Cheeks pop out and are easily enjoyable. And to put a cherry on the cake, I had a proud yet slightly disturbing experience of tasting the eye. Wow. Not a super pleasant experience, I have to admit.

Add to the meal: 6 crab caught the other day, kept live in the waters off the dock. Corn on the cob, asparagus, and rice.

The wine pairings with dinner: a Marsannay Rose [pinot noir]. Good, strawberry, and long mild finish. But a little lacking somehow overall. However. We then proceeded to tackle a bottle of Georges Duboeuf Macon-Villages 2003. Chardonnay. And possibly the nicest, most friendly chardonnay I can recall. Refreshing, fruity, light, and overall likeable and popular by all involved.

The last bit I have to add – we went on an adventure to a local island where Gerry had sourced some incredible wild chives we’ve been enjoying. They have a fresh chive vibe, but with a deep-fried onion kind of depth of flavour. Nuts. So we dug up about a hundred plants, and I’m taking 3-4 dozen home to plant. They are seriously good. The best chives I’ve had, and I’ve become a big chive fan. Fun to spend some time on an island in the middle of the tide, that I’ve seen for years, but never set foot on.

The smoker’s smoking away, smoking up some moose brisket, game sausages, and whloe fillets of brined ling cod. We just finished lunch – I made a crab, brie, and wild chive egg scramble with toast and home-made blackberry jam.

This afternoon, H’s off early, and wants to go salmon fishing for a bit, which is near a spot where he wants to try for a monster ling cod. He wants to catch a small ling to use as live bait. The monster ling will eat their own kind, so it will be interesting to see if we can catch what they refer to as a ‘bucket head’ or ‘dinosaur’. Salmon fishing has seriously been sucking for the guides up here. Terrible. The vast majority of guides are getting skunked, shift after shift, day after day. H was able to get a 20lb spring in the boat yesterday, after a lot of nothing.

Anyway. Time for a nap, as I said.

Ling cod fishing is a lot of fun – a lot of action. I had a huge dog fish [small shark] coming after one of the ling on my line. Had to have been a big dog fish to want a piece of a 10 lb ling cod. I’ve been surprised how many ling are in that size range – which is perfect for eating. We’ve caught one teenie one, and the big brute 25 pounder, but the vast majority look like what P shows in the picture.

And then, happy times for P. She’s heard for years about the deep fried cod feeds out here. And they hadn’t done one for a couple years, so the stars aligned, and it was time. An epic feed. P will certainly remember it for a long, long time. We deep fried a whole 10-12 lb ling cod, and many pounds of russet potatoes. Likely the best fish and chips we’ll ever have. Speaking of which, I’m going to have some leftover cod for breakfast, I think. Yesterday’s lunch was the leftover cod ‘salad sandwich’ with a half crab. Life’s rough.

Another notable item – we’re experienceing our first ‘red tide’. The locals haven’t seen the goopy brown and red waters this bad ever. At first they weren’t sure what it was in Butte inlet. Brown gloopy stuff, so thick that you can’t see more than a few inches down through it. Now in, Alberta, that’s normal for our lakes. But here, that’s bizarre, contrasted against the cold crystal clear ocean water. So no eating shellfish while we’re here. Not unless we want to die.