WWOTM. Gone Fishing.

(just in case you're wondering, WWOTM stands for the 2012 series of our trip to Minnesota: We Wandered Out To Minnesota)

I wouldn't say I'm a fish fan. I love to eat it. I love to cook it. But catching it and cleaning it? No thanks. Especially when fishing with live worms. Or anything alive for that matter. My contribution to this fishing trip was 1) Slamming down the top to the fish cooler in the boat when one was emptied in there (it keeps the fish swimming and alive until we got back to the cabin) and 2) Consuming the fish. 

We did pretty well this trip- we got 7 fish in about an hour.  We caught 5 Northern Pike, 1 Walleye, and 1 Sunfish.  Since I have never actually seen the water-to-table process of preparing fish before, I thought I should document the process. Be forewarned- there are fish guts in this post! 

This is the lake we went fishing on-just outside the back door of the cabin. It gets to about 30 feet in some points. Isn't it beautiful?

 Some of the fish we caught.  The long skinny ones are the Norther Pike. After you get to shore you put them in a net near your fish-cleaning area.  Some of them may not be dead at this point. I've been told this is normal.

The first thing you do is give the fish a big ol' bonk in the head with the butt of your cleaning knife. You give it one good head trauma and it's dead. 

With your knife, you go in at the back of the head and carve all the way down to almost the tail.

It should look like this. 

Then you place your knife between the skin and filet it all the way down. 

Repeat on the other side. 

Ta-da! Drop the fish remains into a bucket. See how the skin hangs down on both sides? 2 filets from  one fish.

K-man actually filleted 2 of them pretty well. Here in the picture you can see his dad finishing the Walleye. 

The next day we cooked them simply and deliciously: bread each filet in flour, salt, and pepper. Fry in butter.  Yuuuuuum.