They had better be worth it

You know how long it takes to fillet 30+ bluegills? A LONG time! I've got about a lb of fillets in the fridge and will be doing something with them. All the recipes I see say to salt and pepper them and dredge in flour and pan fry. These are too small to do that so I am thinking of making a beer batter and dumping them in and dropping chucks into the Fry Daddy. I'll try and remember to get pics and or vid to post on my food blog.

So we've been doing a bit of fishing. Friday we went out and I swear I limited out within an hour (probably took a bit longer then that, but it seemed like an hour). I finally started catching bluegill and the very nice retired gentleman who joined us on the dock caught a lot of them and let me have them so I could finally try them. It was a very nice evening. He and his friend are retired and they are attempting to fish every water int he state of Idaho and eventually in Washington.

Saturday we got up early as we wanted to go to Dworshak. We went via Lewiston where we picked up some gas, worms and had the tires checked. Stopped at the grocery store in Orofino and picked up a few munchies and then up to the dam to see what we could see. I'll get that vid done sometime this week.

We'd hoped to do some fishing from the shore, but the water is WAAYYYY down and even at the state park we couldn't easily access the water unless we wanted to do some hiking. Since hubby wasn't going to be able to do that we looked around and then headed towards Moose Creek reservoir. There is one place we could get to the water at Dworshak easily, but we were on the wrong side of the lake to get to Dent Bridge without doubling back. So we'll see maybe about trying to get there via Elk River some other time.

Stopped in Deary for a late lunch, the munchies were not going to be enough. If you are in Deary some time and want some yummy food, I HIGHLY recommend Ireland's Kozy Korner (related to Ireland's at the Y in Potlatch, another very yummy place for burgers and such). We just went with burgers and fries. Hubby got the Mustang burger, which was loaded and had bbq sauce and I went with a bacon cheese burger. MMMMMMMMMM The fry sauce was to die for. We couldn't figure out where the kick was from, finally asked. It was horseradish. So we'll have to try and duplicate for home yummyness.

So we finally get to Moose Creek and there are lots of people. Set up in a spot and fished for a while. Some interest, but not much and while it was nice, wasn't where we resonated for fishing, so we packed up and headed for Spring Valley. Much better and we limited out on trout again and I caught one more blue gill. So last night was cleaning fish night, esp since I picked up a cheap fillet knife. Course now I know why most of the vids I saw for filleting blue gill showed them using electric filleting knives. UGH!

Sp today is putter around day. We'd given serious consideration of heading back to Spring Valley early this morning, but decided sleeping in was more tempting.

So puttering we are doing. I have two trays of tomato paste in the dehydrator on low heat to dry and I've a cookie sheet with blobs of tomato past freezing. I still have part of the can in the fridge waiting for the cookie sheet to be free. We'd gotten it from a friend who'd bought it years ago and never used it. She doesn't even remember why they bought it as they don't use tomato paste that often in the first place LOL).

Well, time to putter some more.

Comments

Chimera said…
Have you considered building your own smoker for all the fish you catch? There are 'Net sites that show you how, starting with the gutted-of-motor-works bodies of old fridges and freezers...

Smoked fish has a certain salivary property that can't be imitated.
JeanC said…
I've actually thought about that. The little gas grill we picked up on freecycle has two burners and uses lava rock. I think I can use that as a smoker if I set things up right.

I've had smoked trout and it is very yummy.