Smoked Fish

Depending on where your from the idea of Smoking foods take on several different meanings. I for one have only thought about meat and maybe poultry never fish. But smoking Fish is a common practice that has been around for a long time. The fish pictured are White Bass.. Many of the Locals have said they are garbage fish. Well I don't believe in the term garbage anything. There are some fish that are not edible and I have had my fair share of them. But most Fish are edible. I decided to save my catch on a recent trip and smoke them slow for several hours and recouped them the next day. The result was the magnificent bronze colored, smoked flavor fish I have ever seen or eaten. We were able to recoup most of the flesh by just peeling the skin and bone away and we took the fish and made a wonderful White Bass Smoked Dip spritz with a freshly squeezed lemon wedge and served with tortillas. It was magnificent! Recipe will be posted soon ......

Winter Fishing, Yes Im out of my mind!!

I had a wonderful time yesterday with my buddy Todd and Scott. Scott works with an organization called Freedom Outdoors Adventures; they provide hunting and fishing expeditions to veterans and really focus their time and energy on wounded veterans. It's a great organization centered around people who really care and put in the work to make dreams happen. So yesterday Todd and myself accompanied Scott on a winter fishing trip. It was cold!!! But we had so much fun!! I have been trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle to target Hybrid Striped Bass. Which by the way are crossed with the White Bass and the Striped bass. As hybrids they don't have the ability to reproduce, but they have all of the tools that make them go through the motions. Currently the Stripers and Hybrids are feeding up getting ready to travel up river to spawn. Stripers need moving water for thier eggs to hatch and thats why year after year stripers leave from Large lake impoundments and the Ocean (Because they live in both) and head up stream to spawn. The Meat is wonderful. but the real treat is the immense size that stripers not hybrids get, which is around 30-50lbs. Hybrids average around 10-12lbs but I am willing to bet that you will never fight a harder fighting fish at that weight class. Pound for Pound they are tougher than any other species of fish with comparable size.

We had a great time out there and Scott is a first class individual. In a month or two the stripers will be headed up river to spawn and I will be there with pole and carolina sinker waiting for them.

Destin one of the best kept secrets

Visiting Destin was great. Every time we go we have a wonderful time. This time we had challenging weather and it seemed as if the tornado's and hail followed us from home. But being a glutton for punishment I headed to the bay to do some fishing. Fishing wasn't that great due to the cold front moving in. But nonetheless, when the sky opened up enough to let the sun peak through, it made for some dramatic cloud formations and exquisitee sunsets. I have to remember that April 15th is when the pompano are running along the coast. They were being caught left and right prior to storm moving in. I would have loved to have wrestled with a few pompano in the surf. They are a great tasting fish. Maybe next year or later on this fall I will try my hand at snapper and maybe some grouper, mmmmm........ So since I was not able to bring any fish back to the villa, I had to buy some freshly caught fish at the market. It was my first time eating scamp and it was absolutely delicious. My wife packed most of the ingredients from home and put them in the cooler. Garlic, butter, sea salt and the pepper mill. The fish coupled with fresh veggies and prawns was awesome. My only disappointment was not being able to find my beer singha an import from Thailand that I absolutely love. So I resorted to a new Belgian brew that racked up a 9.8% alcohol content and I couldn't remember nothing after polishing that joker off. But anyway, we ended up buying a George Foreman grill the "G5" (Whatever) I'm not really into the whole Foreman grill hype, but my wife really wanted a waffle maker that also made panini bread sandwiches and the Foreman had many options. All in all Destin was beautiful even though the weather was bad, the food was great and we had time to step away from the garden and regroup after the disaster this past week.