Do we really have to eat all those fish in one day? A day of eating fish 4 species three meals!

Our rules dictate that although we can catch fish on solo trips all fish must be eaten as a team.
Dave caught a dozen smelt solo and Clay caught a Rainbow trout solo. We decided to cook them while fishing for crappie and bluegill, so that is a total for four species to eat in just a few hours on the ice...

Let's start with Breakfast.
For breakfast Clay prepared a nice Trout Cream Cheese Spread to serve over bagels, this also goes well at parties served with crackers and red wine.

Here's how you make it.
Ingredients:
Trout
Seasoning
Butter
Cream Cheese
Walnuts

Clean and gut the trout, maybe you should have the kids help with this

Rub the trout with seasonings of your choice, in this case we used a salmon rub that someone had given me for Christmas

Bella was really helpful seasoning the trout

Place the trout on a piece of foil that has butter rubbed on it and roll it up

Cook the trout a 400 degrees until it's done about 20 minutes, you can tell it's done when the meat flakes off the bone. You can stop and eat the trout right now and it would be yummy. (In fact you should do that!)

Or you can continue on and make a dip.

Once trout is cooked it easily comes off the bones

In a bowl combine cream cheese with the trout meat and roll it into balls.

Then roll those balls around in chopped walnuts.

Chill and Serve!

We brought it out on the ice and had it one bagels for a healthy breakfast.

Dave Loves Fish!

MMM Gooood!

Now it's time for brunch!
We decided to cook up the smelt for brunch.
Cooking smelt is super easy.
Ingredients:
Smelt
Breadcrumbs
Oil

We cooked these inside our portable shanty and quickly realized we needed to open the vents...(Guess why!)

Take the cleaned smelt and roll them around in breadcrumbs, then drop them into hot oil and cook them until they are golden brown on both sides, serve them hot!

Careful Dave those are hot!

If you fish with us you have to eat with us!

Bones and all...

you can see the regret on Clay's face

Lots of people eat the smelt heads and bones, for our purposes we decided to serve them head-free. One of us ate the bones and now regrets the choice!

Dave cooked us up a pan-fish lunch of Black Crappie and Bluegill....

These taste just like they look.

Wow Dave, that's something, maybe next time Clay should cook!

This is probably the easiest thing we've cooked so far, and we do not recommend it!

Clean and scale the fish leaving the heads on, heat a little oil in the fry pan and throw the fish in. Season with a little salt and pepper then turn them over and do the same, cook them until the fish flakes off the bone and serve.

We did no justice to those panfish, many people love to eat these fish and do a great job of cooking them!

Stay tuned for more fishing and stories!