ISO Fantastic Fish Stories...

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Kayelle

Chef Extraordinaire
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Aloha! We're back home from Hawaii, and I wanted to tell you about the best fish I EVER ATE and the most amazing part is I cooked it!

We bought a nice thick piece of ONO, and a jar of All Purpose Hawaiian Seasoning Salt (8 oz) - Noh Foods Hawaii
The condo where we stay has an electric range I hate, and skillets that belong in the trash, but I did have some bacon fat from breakfast so I felt brave. ;) I was very generous with the seasoning salt that contains not only Hawaiian sea salt, but also garlic, vinegar, and chili peppers. I seared the 2" thick ONO on both sides in the bacon fat, and shoved the pan in the 350d. oven for a few minutes. I must have gotten really lucky and hit that "sweet spot" where it was just seconds away from being under done!
Zowers........that was the best piece of fish I've ever eaten in my very long life!!

ONO is also known as Wahoo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Do you have a "Fabulous Fish Story"? I'd love to hear it. ;)
 
The absolute best fish we ever ate was after a VERY long plane trip to Maui from here in the heartland. Exhausted, we popped into a beachside restaurant, met Loretta, the parrot, and had the most exquisite piece of macadamia crusted mahi mahi (also known as dolphin, but no relation to Flipper, it's a fish, not a mammal) ever. DH and I still talk about it. The second best fish is the nasty, predatory lionfish, coconut crusted, at one of our favorite places in Mexico. And right up there is the walleye my dad and I would catch on Lake of the Woods in Ontario. Just fried in butter.
 
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The absolute best fish we ever ate was after a VERY long plane trip to Maui from here in the heartland. Exhausted, we popped into a beachside restaurant, met Loretta, the parrot, and had the most exquisite piece of macadamia crusted mahi mahi (also known as dolphin, but no relation to Flipper, it's a fish, not a mammal) ever. DH and I still talk about it. The second best fish is the nasty, predatory lionfish, coconut crusted, at one of our favorite places in Mexico. And right up there is the walleye my dad and I would catch on Lake of the Woods in Ontario. Just fried in butter.

Ahhhh yes, Mahi Mahi Dawg, also known as Dorado in Mexico. Many moons ago my late husband and I came home with a dry ice chest filled with Dorado. Mahi-mahi or "Dorado&quot fish pictures and species identification

Thanks for the lip smacking report. :yum:
 
Yes! Dorado! Ohhh, how I would love to catch and bring one home. :yum: When you fish there and bring it in, any restaurant will cook it up for you. They serve it with a variety of sauces and sides.

Drat. I saw a recent video where a guy was showing off his mahi catch, and a seal jumped up and stole it! Just grabbed its tail from the boat and took off!
 
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About 45-50 years ago, I had a friend who like to fish off the coast of Gloucester MA. He kept raving about bluefish. I finally got him to bring me some. That was one delicious fish.

Years later, when I was working in Gloucester, I dropped in on the IT Manager and we got to chatting. He reached into his desk and pulled out a mason jar of ugly looking dried up cubes of some kind of flesh and offered me a piece. He wouldn't tell me what it was until after I tasted it. WOW, it was extraordinary - smoked bluefish.
 
The very first thing that came to mind was back in my camping and fishing days, the last camping trip was about 15 years ago. I'll never forget how good fresh caught brook trout is, lightly seasoned and fried in a cast iron pan over an open campfire. Gosh, those were the days....:)
 
Yep, those were the days Cheryl when life was so sweet and simple camping and cooking in the great outdoors. Our kids actually talked to us by the campfire because there was nothing else for them to do without a single "portable electronic gadget" yet invented. Sigh..
 
I have a couple of fish stories ;) I made wahoo a few years ago, smeared with olive oil and fresh herbs from my garden, seared in my cast-iron grill pan. So yummy!

No. 2: The first time I had Dover sole was in a historic restaurant in Ireland - pan-seared and served with a lemony sauce with currants. Delicious!
 
I was married to a commercial fisherman. On the very last catch, he would find the largest Haddock and gut it for me. He would bring it home minus the head and filet it in the house. Regardless of the size, I would always cook the whole thing for supper.

One day he came through the door and told me to clear off the kitchen table. He then came in with a Haddock that had been gutted, but still had the head on it. That thing hung over both ends of the table. That fish was less than three hours old. The tail was still curled upwards. It was spotted swimming along side the boat as it was headed in to dock. My husband and another fisherman grabbed an instrument that was on deck and they speared it. Getting it aboard was another thing.

He fileted it and cut off the head. Now I always cooked the whole fish that he brought home that night. There was no way I was going to cook all of this one. I gave some to my landlady upstairs along with the frame and head. She always made fish chowder. I put aside some for supper and the rest got wrapped for the freezer in meal size packets.

I then baked the filets for supper just plain with some lemon squeezed on it. It was so fresh tasting. Even the kids noticed the difference. Sitting here, I can still taste it and my mouth is watering. :angel:
 
If shrimp count, I can still almost taste the fresh grilled shrimp I had when we went to our timeshare resort in Fort Myers Beach for the first time. We checked in on our 38th wedding anniversary and wanted to go somewhere "special". After suggestions from the resort staff and looking at menus we gave up. Went riding around until we ended up at the old fish market/dockside bar and restaurant in town. Himself remembered going to that same market with his Dad when he would visit his parents in the early 1970s before we were married. The shrimp was simply prepared, but it was delicious since it had just been swimming in the gulf about three hours earlier.

If you want my best fish ever story involving a fish, it is my memory of going to the local bar (back when it was OK for a kid of 8 to come in with their parent) for the Friday Fish Fry. All you could eat Lake Erie perch. They are my favorite fresh water fish. :yum:
 
If shrimp count, I can still almost taste the fresh grilled shrimp I had when we went to our timeshare resort in Fort Myers Beach for the first time. We checked in on our 38th wedding anniversary and wanted to go somewhere "special". After suggestions from the resort staff and looking at menus we gave up. Went riding around until we ended up at the old fish market/dockside bar and restaurant in town. Himself remembered going to that same market with his Dad when he would visit his parents in the early 1970s before we were married. The shrimp was simply prepared, but it was delicious since it had just been swimming in the gulf about three hours earlier.

If you want my best fish ever story involving a fish, it is my memory of going to the local bar (back when it was OK for a kid of 8 to come in with their parent) for the Friday Fish Fry. All you could eat Lake Erie perch. They are my favorite fresh water fish. :yum:

Around the corner from where I lived the French Club every Friday would turn their dance floor into a restaurant and families with very small children would always come even though the bar was right through the open doorway. Should any kids wander into the bar side, they would come back on heir own. Fish was always the main item. But I do remember when one mother stated the reason they came every Friday was because no one ever complained about the kids. And there were some very raucous kids there. But it was family night and kids are part of the family.

As we all know shrimp can be very tricky to make. You cook them until they turn pink and the are so tender, but cook them too long and they become tough. Not long enough and they are half raw. YUK! But this club had their boiled shrimp down to an art. You got a heaping bowl of shrimp, (shell your own) with a good size helping of garlic butter to dip them in. Always a favorite with the crowd and myself. :angel:
 
Another fish story: we took the whole fam damily on DH's side to Michigan, one of the great lakes. We went fishing. We had enough people to take two boats. The fishing boats hadn't caught anything for weeks, and told us fishing was really bad, but we surprised them, and caught lots of salmon, etc. The crew cleaned and filleted them, and we had a wonderful barbeque cook out. So much fish that we had to give a bunch away, and got free wave-runner time in exchange! And being an old ND gal, I was the only one who knew how to drive a wave-runner with all the waves, very similar to driving a snowmobile! Watching others try to drive a wave-runner was very entertaining, especially with somewhat, um, large people on the back. And according to some, the water was very cold!
 
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The best fish I have ever eaten is the walleye we caught at Lake-of-the-Woods. My grandpa had a short (maybe 3-4 ft) steel fishing rod that us kids used that to catch our first walleye. I can still see us out in the fishing boat....me with that rod, a bobber on it. My grandpa manning the net. Bringing my first walleye back to the dock and kissing it. And my grandma making sure I got to eat the tail, pan fried, so I didn't get any bones. You can cook walleye lots of ways, but my favorite is breaded and pan fried. Takes me back to Lake-of-the-Woods and summers spent with my grandparents. Walking the ditches to pick wild asparagus. A side of wild asparagus with fresh walleye--does it get any better than this?
 
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My favorite times as a commercial fisherman were when we started fishing for rock cod/ling cod/Dungeness crabs/prawns after the trolling season for Spring salmon had closed for the year.
There were half a dozen boats like mine with live fish wells in the S. Gulf Islands.
In the evenings some of us would raft up. We all had diesel flat top stoves.
Each boat would fill the cast iron stove top with some form of fresh seafood.
One would have crab, another lingcod fillets, another large whole prawns still jumping, another cook made a huge salad. Lots of tins of cold beer we stored in the live wells. Good friends. Playing cribbage after diner until the sun went down.
These crews were all lovers of excellent food. All the cooks were experts.
Funny how in every society people gravitate to those who are like minded.
Those were very special times.
 
My best fish story, I caught a 12 inch rainbow in a beaver dam. This critter would lunge at my worm, and stop like it had just run into a glass door, about two inches from my worm. He lunged and came up short three times, then gave up. I flipped my worm closer to the log that he hid under, and when he lunged, he bit the worm and I set the hook. I started reeling him to me, and at that same spot that he had stopped before, he came to a dead halt. I couldn't pull him any further. I was truly puzzled. I walked into the beaver dam, about chest deep water. I bent into the water and grabbed him. It was then that I saw he was tethered to the log by a broken fishing line, with its hook in his mouth. I clipped the line and took by fish home, cleaned and ate him with the brookies we'd caught.

My Dad always just dipped the trout in flour, pan fried in about two inches of oil, until golden brown on both sides. There were cleaned of course, with the heads removed. I would just grab the backbone at the head end, and peel it out, bones and all like a zipper. No sides were served, and the only condiment was ketchup. Sooooooo good, sitting there with my Dad, just eating a mess of freshly caught and cooked brook trout.

Equal to that was swordfish, and ahi tuna kabobs cooked on the Webber with only my eldest daughter, but that's another story.

Oh, but wait, the brook trout caught while camping with DW and my kids (they were small then), sealed and cooked in foil with butter, salt, onion, carrots potatoes was fabulous. I guess any great fish, prepared well, when eaten with the best people makes for the best fish meal ever.

Seeeeeeya; Chief Longwind of the North
 
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My favourite view from the cabin.


How I love LOTW.

OK, one more. Dad caught a really big walleye, and Mom decided she wanted to stuff it and bake it whole, as her mother used to do. We all gave her the hairy eye, as we were used to having it filleted and pan fried. It actually was pretty good.
 
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How I love LOTW.
We just call it "The Lake." My grandparents, in-laws, my mom and her brothers built the cabin in 1948. My cousin inherited it when my grandma died (because he was the oldest cousin on both sides). The condition my grandma put on that was that the other side would always have access to it. The only change he made was to put in hot and cold running water, an indoor toilet, and a shower. The furniture is the same as it was when my grandparents were alive. The water is low this year--the sandbars are visible...there are four of them and we used to walk along the sandbars to "the Loaf," a rock that looked like a loaf of bread. There is the Big Loaf and the Little Loaf...my cousin's grandkids are doing the same thing when they go to the cabin.
 

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