Fish Tails and Tales

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Leigh, this post's for you!!

All others, read at your own risk, no lifeguards are on duty.

Fisherhubby's final vacation fish count was 379 in two weeks. Some of you have asked me what we DO with all of those.

Well - - - I don't do ANYTHING with most of them. Fisherhubby is a "catch and release" kind of guy. MOST of those 379 fish never even came up to the cabin for me to take a peek at them.

This was one exception:


A pretty nice northern pike. Fisherhubby was as proud as a cat who caught a mouse, so he brought it right up to the door for me to snap this picture.

Northern Pike are toothy and put up a great fight. They are also quite slimy, so Fisherhubby calls them "snot rockets."

Don't go there.




This Disney "Sword in the Stone" clip, shows a pretty realistic pike who preys on Arthur.

They are really good eating with very white meat. However, they do have a "Y" bone running through the muscle and you have to know how to fillet them or you have a bone in every bite.


This is a large mouth bass - - - a FIVE POUND large mouth bass. I guess that's pretty big 'cause Fisherhubby wanted me to be SURE and tell you that part.

We NEVER eat these. Some OTHER people eat them, but I think they taste tooooooo stinkin' fishy. YUCK.

They are very fun to catch, if you like that sort of thing, so FH just catches and releases them to his heart's content.


Now THIS little guy is a treasure!!! He is what I call a panfish - - - which simply means they are small enough to fry in a pan. In the above clip, Arthur is a panfish. A TALKING panfish. I've never seen a TALKING panfish in real life, but no matter.

There are several varieties of panfish - - - I THINK this one is a bluegill, but I'm not sure. If you think a biology teacher OUGHT to know her panfish one from the other, well you would be RIGHT. But it isn't quite as easy as it sounds. Take a look at this:

(chart from www.fish.state.pa.us)

Now then, is our little fish a bluegill or a pumpkinseed???? I think he has some characteristics of BOTH. And besides, there are several OTHER varieties too, and they all just sort of cornfuse me!

I can't tell them apart, so I just call them ALL yummy.



Twice during the two weeks Fisherhubby caught a nice little bucket of panfish.


He filleted them right up into fish nuggets.

I dredged them in a flour, salt, and pepper mixture and fried them in about a half inch of hot oil in a frying pan. Very important that the oil is HOT when you start or they won't be a pretty crispy brown.


Yum Yum!!! Northwoods delicacy!!!!

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