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Posts: 2865
Location: Brookfield, WI | As some of you may have noticed, I do a lot of cooking when I'm not annoying the people here in my pursuit of muskie knowledge and muskie inspired friendship. I'm not ashamed to admit that my skills with a chef's knife and in front of a range far surpass those I bring to the world of muskie fishing. I often find time to visit a number of different cooking websites and sometimes participate on their message boards to improve my skills in the kitchen, much as I do here to improve my significantly more limited fishing skills. When I do participate in a cooking forum, I often end my posts with tidbit relating to muskies.
One tidbit often on the menu is "I like muskies, practice C,P,&R, catch, photo, and release". In my own little way I try to bring this practice up where many have no idea it even exists, in fact, in places where some have no idea what a muskie even is.
Yesterday I was perusing one of these forums, and saw a thread titled "Need finishing sauce for Northern Pike". As you can imagine I opened this thread without hesitation. The mention of Esox quickly catches my attention. The poster had caught and filleted a pike he was going to bake and was looking for suggestions. Several tasty recommendations were made, and I filed them away in the cookbook that is my brain. One of the answering posts began in this way.
"As a general rule, Sam, any sauce that works with lobster goes well with Northern pike, musky, or pickeral. In fact, many traditional "poor man's lobster" recipes used Northern pike." This sentence was followed by an elaborate recipe that I hope to someday employ if I ever catch a northern of the eating variety.
Being the Internet busybody and promoter of all things muskie that I am, I followed that post with what I thought was a rather light-hearted response.
"Please don't eat muskies. They're rare and hard enough to catch as it is. 
Save the baking and fish fries for the pike. They taste much better, (the small ones anyway), reproduce much easier, and don't require the time and money to keep stocked.
Kevin
I like muskies. Practice C,P,&R. Catch, Photo, and Release"
I also included a photo of my 47.5" muskie from late last year thinking it's beauty might help make my point, and just because I felt like posting it on that forum.
I know what many of you may be thinking, however, this did not result in a C & R discussion. Here's the answer to my post.
"So all you musky chasers up north keep saying. And I really bought in to that "fish of a thousand casts" sort of thing. But on my first musky trip in WI we caught 17 in three days, most of them legal size.
Now I use flyfishing gear to make musky fishing challanging.
If you want to catch musky get off of them flowages and try some of the smaller waters. Or, better yet, come down here and fish Cave Run or Green River Lakes. I guarantee you'll catch a few every time."
Please don't pick at this poster's spelling and grammar, as he lists Food Writer as his occupation.
Sooooo, to finish off what is an overlong post, another of my finely honed skills, I want to ask a couple questions. Is this muskie fishing game actually must easier than I have been led to believe? Am I missing something? Did I hamper my success during my first season plying the waters of WI and Ontario by having low expectations?
Should I raise my expectations much higher for this coming season? Maybe we all should, considering how easy catching a gross of muskies can obviously be?
Kevin
Don't over cook your steaks, no need to kill them twice.
Edited by MuskyHopeful 2/19/2007 4:49 PM
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Posts: 13688
Location: minocqua, wi. | not sure but i did get a great pike recipe from a guy whilst slobbing down a beer and pizza at Heart II this winter. cook speghetti noodles ... cut them into small pieces and put them in a bowl. add and egg a little flour a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt and mix. now cake the batter using parmessan cheese ... it will get thick and very sticky ... make patties and fry in oil. the noodles get crunchy and the fish cakes are delicious. |
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| Stop it Sled! you are making me hungry for some pike! |
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Location: Northern Wisconsin | jonnysled - 2/19/2007 4:53 PM
not sure but i did get a great pike recipe from a guy whilst slobbing down a beer and pizza at Heart II this winter. cook speghetti noodles ... cut them into small pieces and put them in a bowl. add and egg a little flour a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of salt and mix. now cake the batter using parmessan cheese ... it will get thick and very sticky ... make patties and fry in oil. the noodles get crunchy and the fish cakes are delicious.
eww... lol |
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Posts: 32890
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Pike are great eating. I have LOTS of recipes for them. Muskies are not as good, take my word for it. Back before CPR was even an idea we used to eat muskie now and again. I didn't like it much. |
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Posts: 185
Location: Pound, WI | Pike through the ice.........Yummmmm!
Brian |
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Posts: 2427
Location: Ft. Wayne Indiana | All fish, no matter what kind is 100% completely sick, gross and NASTY....
Eating a pike...no way, not even if you paid me. |
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Posts: 32890
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Which suits me fine, more on the plate for ME. Yummmmy. |
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Posts: 569
Location: Williamstown, WV | 100% gross and nasty? ummm.....ok
My favorite would probably be bluegill, but I do like about everything. I have had pike while in Canada and I must say that I thought it was very good. We just deep fried our pike though in a basic beer batter recipe...very good.
Shawn |
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Posts: 2427
Location: Ft. Wayne Indiana | I really don't know why I hate fish...it just seems gross...I would assume it is totally a mental thing but it just freaks me out. |
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Posts: 32890
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Mike, I assure you, it is. |
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Posts: 2753
Location: Mauston, Wisconsin | Kevin- Like you, I am a foodie! I love cooking, when I'm home my wife doesn't cook. At +400 cook book's it's more than a hobby. Like- SWorrall -> Esox Lucius is one of my favorite freshwater eating fish. Here again though you don't want to be eating +36" fish-> to many PCB's & other nasty stuff. I like 24-30" pike. If you have a lake over stocked with hammer handles, they make great pickled fish(I have a killer recipe).
Keep in mind the author said "we" not "I" and "keeper size". Perhaps it was 6 guys fishing Butternut? If they hit the bite right, 17 fish in three days is not unlikely, i.e., 2.8 fish per person (~1 per day/per person).
jonnysled- sounds interesting!
Yes- poor man's lobster! Gently poached in acidulated water (I like lime juice) flavored with splash of good riesling, sliced onion, fresh white pepper & a little salt, then served with drawn butter or better yet a white riesling wine dill sauce made from the poaching liquid. Another favorite is pan fried with Italian bread crumb coating.
Yum, yum!
Al |
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| Small Northern Pike taste almost as good as walleye if done right, Yum Yum |
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| Couple thoughts...
1) I was once given some fresh smoked pike by a LOTW local and it was almost as good as killer smoked whitefish from up in the Yoop.
2) Al Warner is an awesome cook. Believe whatever he says.
3) The fish I catch and eat are filleted perch and scaled/gutted gills. If I could catch a walleye, I would eat that, too.
4) Ate muskie once, it was not so good. |
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Posts: 382
| Did somebody say pike fry? Last weekend in devils lake nd
They don't get any fresher!
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trav.jpg (72KB - 90 downloads)
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skillet.jpg (49KB - 103 downloads)
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Posts: 32890
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Looks like you guys had a great trip. I have wanted to fish Pike over there for a few years. That ever expanding lake is loaded with them. |
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Posts: 317
| 17 in one day? Well, he did say he was from KY, so he probably isn't too good with them fancy number things!  J/K you KY boys!
If he was fishing small waters, I don't doubt they had a high number time, especially early in the year. WI is famous for those 34" rockets. let's try and have him repeat the feat.
I'm a foodie and cook myself, and poached or fried Pike is every bit as good as walleye, especially from cold water. pickled pike is tasty too.
Edited by MuskyStalker 2/20/2007 8:52 AM
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Posts: 3240
Location: Racine, Wi | Mike, I'm kinda like you. Although, my dislike for some fish is finding bones when I'm eating them. That turns me off, then I have to cram down more potatos and beans. But when I clean fish, you'll be hard pressed to find a bone in them. I used to like eating salmon, but not so much anymore. Not sure why. We did however have an excellent pike fry earlier this winter. May just happen agian this weekend. |
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Posts: 76
| Usually when I am talking fishing to a non-musky fisherman they will ask me how a musky tastes. I just tell them they are poisonous. Some times they believe it and others call BS. When they call BS I tell them well, they ain't really poisonous, you just puke your guts out after eating one.
My way of promoting catch and release. I started telling people this after seeing a guy at a local boatlanding filleting 42 incher. Thinking of him eating that fish made me almost puke so it isn't totally false. |
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| Kevin,
Never raise the bar when you can lower the stools |
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Posts: 157
Location: Wausau/Phillips WI | Way way back in the 50's and 60's my Dad would always bake muskies and my Mom always said "bring home northerns, they taste alot better" and we all would nod our heads in agreement. Muskies taste wise fall way behind any fish i've ever eaten and I would match them up with the fried carp I had once. Every year we eat lots of walleyes, northerns, and bluegills, with perch, trout, salmon, and bullheads thrown in. Nothing better than bullheads with bbq sauce on the grill.
Smoked muskies taste OK but what doesn't taste good smoked. Still trying to break my neighbor of smoking any muskies they accidently catch fishing for walleyes.
Just let'em go.
Buddy
Edited by buddysolberg 2/21/2007 8:48 PM
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Posts: 8788
| Kevin,
If you fish enough, you will eventually encounter that day where the fish are just going nuts. And I think there's a reason guys like you and me have yet to encounter such a day... It sure ain't for lack of trying, lack of confidence, or enthusiasm, and it's not because we're doing the wrong things in the wrong places. (Fishing with guides and seasoned anglers out of their boats eliminates that for the most part)
It's because you and I both needed to experience those fishless days, those followless days, three guys in the boat who don't move a thing all day, after day, after day...
Why, you ask? Well, I can't speak for you, but I came from a lifetime of multi-species fishing, where it was always expected that fish would be caught. Slow days were "only a couple of fish", good days were a meal and some for the freezer. Being older, we didn't have the luxury of years spent learning that musky fishing is challenging, that fishless days are going to happen, that you can do all the right things in the right places and all three guys come up empty...
Now that that lesson is out of the way Kevin, I feel pretty confident that I will appreciate days on the water purely for being able to spend a day on the water. As for the fish? The fish will come, expectations high or expectations low. If we started out musky fishing with a string multiple fish days, would we appreciate 1 fish days, or would be be frustrated??
Would we still have the enthusiasm to go out when its 40 degrees and raining sideways, casting for 8 hours with numb fingers, or would we say "screw this" after an hour?
My expectations for this year? I'm going to get out as much as I can, and I'm gonna fish as hard and as well as I know how to. I will catch fish, probably some nice ones. I'm also going to have some days where nothing happens. I expect that, and I really don't care, because those days are fun, too.
One thing that's going to be different this year? I'm not going to get discouraged, I'm not going to doubt my abilities, I'm certainly not going to get mad or frustrated, I'm not going to get hung up on how many or how big. I'm going fishing, and I can't wait! |
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| EA you didn't mention how you are going to use gliders less and catch more fish in the process ! 
expect to catch fish every day on the water.... confidence leads to success!
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Posts: 8788
| I have to admit, lure progression hasn't been my strong suit in the past! I'd like to think I've evolved past the "gliders are good, throw them anytime" phase, though. Going to try a more rational approach to lure progression this year, like covering water, throwing lures appropriate for the depth and structure I'm working, maybe searching for active fish first and finesse lures later.
Think it might work? |
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Location: The Yahara Chain | I can't speak to the taste of a musky as I have never eaten or harvested one, but I would just point out the high mercury levels that the muskies have in them. Do you like your mercury rare or well done?
Pike with the y bones removed are my favorite fresh water fish to eat.
Kevin you caught a 47"er in your rookie season....quit complaining |
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Posts: 13688
Location: minocqua, wi. | y-bone removal is a finesse process and requires 1) a quality knife, 2) a strong, flexible thin and sharp blade, 3) patience and 4) a chiropractor. steve put out a really nice video of i think his sone filleting the y-bones out. i learned last summer from Terry in the cleaning shack at Andy Meyers Lodge and have done a bunch this winter. the first batch was a learning process, but now i've got it down and understand the cuts and it's really easy and worthwhile. i'll second the notion of bringing pike home instead of walleyes ... the meat is firmer and they taste better at least from my audience ... when you can't keep up with 5 kids under the age of 13 frying fish, you know it's good!
we've gone from just going tipup fishing to catch fish to making it all worthwhile with some fun fish fries at my house this winter ... and along the way have introduced the sport to some more youngsters this winter and have made it a memorable one.
look in the archives for the cleaning tips if you haven't already ... i think it shows cutting a wedge more or less while i learned what i would call an "inverted filet" ... either way ... ice pike are hard to beat on the table.
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Posts: 2865
Location: Brookfield, WI | Troy, my pizza making brother, I wasn't complaining.
My original post was supposed to be recognized for its ironic tone. I didn't pull that off to well, obviously. This guy I quoted basically said that muskie fishing was so easy, he now does it with a fly rod just so there's some challenge to it.
He spoke to the difficulty of catching muskies with disdain which I found humorous. He made it sound like you can head out on those Kentucky Lakes and catch a few muskies like nothing, and "oh by the way, get off them there flowages and you can catch them in WI one after another. We sure did, by golly".
The point I was poorly trying to make in a back hand way was that thousands of muskie fishermen might disagree with his view on how easy the shiny beasts are to catch.
Believe me, I'm not going to raise my expectations for this year because some yokel on a cooking forum tells me muskies can be caught by the gross. I might, however, raise them a bit because I expect to be a little better fisherman in my sophomore year.
One thing I did find out by writing this post so ineffectively that the point was mostly missed, is lots of you guys like to eat pike. I haven't eaten much pike in my life. Are they tastier through the ice when the water is cold? Summer pike seem a little stinky to me. Perch, walleye, and bluegills I can eat by the livewell full.
Kevin
Ugh, baseball's starting. |
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Posts: 32890
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | Pike is wonderful table fare any time of the year. Properly cleaned and handled, a breaded and pan fried pike fillet is pretty hard to beat. |
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Location: The Yahara Chain | Kevin I love panfish and walleyes but the y boneless pike are my favorites. I believe that all fish taste better when they are caught through the ice.
Why was my last thin crust so crappy? I need a lot of help with my crust. I can fish better than I can make pizza. My pizzas look a lot better than they taste. I specialize in incredible looking pies that taste like crap.
PizzaHopeful |
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Posts: 8788
| Troy
You did remember to cook it, right? |
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