My Best Fish Meals

[WDH]

Jeff, my dad makes smoked whitefish that people will just about fight over!😁

Oooh, I want some!

[barbender]

Danny, if I ever get a wild hair and come down to the Southern get together, I'll be sure to bring some. It's gotten to the point that when I show up some places, people are pretty disappointed if I don't have smoked whitefish. I wish they just liked me for me😂😂

[WV Sawmiller]

   In December 2008 my wife and I took a private boat trip down a tributary of the Amazon in Ecuador and most nights we'd camp in an Indian village or even with the last Ecuadorian army outpost (about 11-12 soldiers living in 2 rough sawed board barracks with a kitchen and a bed of sand for the fire under their cookpot). One night we camped wild after an hour or so pushing through what looked like sawgrass to a remote lake. That night the guide and staff got out with flashlights, a bamboo spear and machetes and caught/killed 30-40 fish (Mostly piranha and maybe a peacock bass or two) and they cleaned the fish and built a small table/stand of green sticks across 4 forked sticks and while we ate breakfast and broke camp they smoked the fish. They spread them out on the table and put a couple of palm fronds on to keep the bugs off and hold the smoke in. I was amazed the fish smoked done as quickly as they did. They were pretty bony, like our bream, but they were very tasty. The guide put them in a cardboard box we had left over from something and we ate on them all morning. I've tried smoking crappie and bluegills and such and some was okay but none was ever as good as those.

[Magicman]

 

 


 
A Cock of the Walk catfish plate ain't bad. 



 
And neither is a whole broiled flounder from Middendorf's. 

[WV Sawmiller]

Lynn,

   All look real good except I have a question about that first plate. Is that a bowl of turnip greens or collards that got mixed in with the fish? :D I never heard of eating greens with fish. Tell me it ain't so even in Mississippi. ;D

[sawguy21]

 :D :D I really enjoy lightly battered fish and chips but no way I can eat that much in one sitting.

[WV Sawmiller]

   Just got back from a fish fry at my son's church (Lick Creek Baptist Church - thank you for asking) where I took my cooker and 20 lbs of catfish fingers/fillets to cook. Since Danny was not here to help I bought a couple boxes of hushpuppy mix and cooked them. Thankfully there were a couple of ladies there cooking much better ones than mine. We had a great meal, plenty of fish with not an excessive amount left over and still got home in time to watch AU beat up on A&M.


 3 legged fish/turkey cooker my brother gave me from his stay in Morgan City LA right after he got out of college. Pot from a flea market in Albany GA circa 1982 made from half a Freon bottle (It has cooked a lot of fish in its day). Long handled Wire ladle/strainer from Saudi Arabia - they use them there with big wok shaped pots to cook Falafels (When I was living and working in Jeddah Saudi Arabia I'd buy Falafel mix off a local vendor and use it for hush puppies at my fish fries from Red Sea fish). Shoes from 7 y/o gd Molly. Pretty fish but about a 7 compared to Jeff's whitefish which made a 10 of the fried fish beauty contest scale IMHO.


 Near done cooking fish. BTW - if you need to cook a large amount of fish ahead of time an ice chest makes an excellent thermal storage container and keeps your food hot and fresh. This is a $3 flea market find. I never pay more than $5 for such coolers at flea markets and keep several on hand to give fish away to friends and family and not worry about getting my cooler back.

   (Okay - The AU/A&M game is now over so I can post this now without having to eat my words :D.)

[Magicman]

Is that a bowl of turnip greens or collards that got mixed in with the fish? :D I never heard of eating greens with fish. Tell me it ain't so even in Mississippi.

Click on the Cock of the Walk link.  You will see that a pot of turnip greens comes with every order of catfish.   Just the way it is.  ;D

[WDH]

Barbender, now you have and went and done it.  Next Spring a Black OPs unit will surreptitiously land under the cover of darkness at your place and kidnap you.  Be sure to keep some smoked whitefish in your possibles bag. 

MM,

The thin fried catfish at Middendorfs is as good as it gets. 

[caveman]

Years ago, when a good friend of mine were probably still in our late teens, we went out into the Gulf about 20 miles one summer day fishing for grouper and mangrove snapper.  The fishing was relatively slow.  We caught a couple of decent snapper and a grouper or two.  Some small dolphin showed up under the boat and we were only able to catch a couple.

After getting back to the house and cleaning the fish we discovered that we did not have any cornmeal (our preferred batter for fish) but we did have some saltines and some instant mashed potato mix.  We dredged the grouper and snapper fillets through some milk and double battered them in the potato/saltine mix along with Everglades seasoning and probably some others and fried them in peanut oil.  While we were eating the snapper I recall both of us commenting that this was the best fish we had ever eaten.  Then, we ate some grouper and had the same comment.  As we were eating the fried fish, we still had a couple of dolphin on a charcoal grill a few feet away. The two of us ate all of the snapper, grouper, and dolphin and we still occasionally talk about that meal - it must have been good for both of us to have such fond memories of it after more than 30 years.

[Jeff]

Breakfast!


 

[thecfarm]

Lunch and Dinner  :D

[WV Sawmiller]

  No picture but I had a very good breakfast here in Charlotte NC this morning at the Skyland Restaurant on South Blvd about a block from the Woodlawn intersection. They do a great job of everything but for breakfast I always get the fish and grits. Two big old Flied Frounder (Fried Flounder - I just never can pronounce it) fillets and a big old bowl of grits and butter and tarter sauce. Its not on the breakfast menu but I saw another patron eating it one time and asked andhave gotten it ever since.

[Corruption Logs]

Anyone ever been up the Gunflint Trail in Northern Minnesota?
This summer I got to have a fried Walleyed sandwich, which seems so simple, but was the best fish meal I have ever had. 
Had it at Trail Center, and they only have it on the menu when it they get it fresh from their local suppliers.

Number 2 best was in Husavik, Iceland.
Had a Halibut steak at a place right next to the docks. We could see them bring fresh fish into the restaurant while we were there! It was so good, and it only had some salt & pepper on it.

[petefrom bearswamp]

Shore lunches of walleye on various NY and canadian lakes fried in Bacon grease from first cooking a pound of bacon.
Oh my arteries!

[K-Guy]

I can eat most fish but don't really enjoy it but I love shrimp.

When I moved to Maine I quickly found out that the sweetest shrimp to be had were from Maine. Sorry guys Gulf shrimp are good but the Maine ones are the best!!

A local restaurant does a great battered shrimp plate that I love. The other way is in butter and garlic by themselves.

Now that some of you are planning to come to Maine to get some... the bad news. The fishery for them has been closed for the last 5 years and they don't know when it'll re-open. I really miss them.

[caveman]

You may have to start eating poached shrimp.

[K-Guy]

@caveman 

I'm afraid not. My wife is very much a by the book type. I just won't ask which gulf the come form.(Gulf of Maine- Gulf coast what's the difference) ;D

Seriously the stocks are down, I actually heard one expert(idiot) say it was Global Climate Change.

[Mike W]

We go walleye fishing as often as we can in the Northern section of the Columbia river where the Pend Oreille and Columbia converge, we liken the walleye as the fresh water version of cod or rock bass we would fish for all the time off the coast, great eating fish, ah, come to think of it, a fish and chip dinner sounds mighty fine right about now.  problem is it always disappears quicker then anyone can think of taking a pic or two of the mean spread made.

[sawguy21]

 :D I had fish and chips, one of my favorite meals, for lunch. It didn't last long.

[Al_Smith]

To me oily fish like trout or salmon does not appeal to me ,too "fishy " but cats like them .My best is lake Erie Perch or walleye  or yellowtail from the Florida keys .Fried BTW ,yum ,yum eat-em -up .Go good with beer . 8)

[Jeff]

My favorite all time is bluegills and perch. Any panfish. Then Walleyes smallmouth bass and whitefish. We are lucky in Michigan. Lots of fish choices.

[wisconsitom]

Talking about bluegill, back when wife and I lived in the U.P....which was many moons ago, we had only 12-ft. non-motorized fishing boat.  We tried Bond Flowage and on one stormy day nearly lost boat and life getting smacked around on tree trunks that stuck out of that body of water.  We quickly moved onto just smaller lakes.  At one-Johnson Pond-which nobody, and I do mean nobody else ever fished, I would do my usual casting of surface hardbaits for largemouth bass in the stumps and downed timber, just because they're fun to catch.  But my wife would hang a worm and bobber over the "wrong" side of the boat, i.e. the deep, non-shoreline side and quickly began producing unbelievably large bluegills, the biggest by far I've ever seen, even to this day.

So here was what amounted to a beaver pond-big dam at one end-but with a deep hole in the middle, ringed by tamaracks and pitcher plants....and these really nice fish.  I'd say those were our best eating fish ever.

As a side-note, we were there one evening a bit before sundown when a cannon went off.  I just could not understand what the heck we were hearing, but eventually, the beaver's head appeared on the surface of the lake.  I never knew they sounded so deep, or if, for that matter, they always sound like that.  Unbelievably deep boom, but it was just the beaver warning us off!  Maybe something to do with the topography, it didn't sound like a "slap", but as I say, like heavy artillery fire.

[Raider Bill]

To me oily fish like trout or salmon does not appeal to me ,too "fishy " but cats like them .My best is lake Erie Perch or walleye  or yellowtail from the Florida keys .Fried BTW ,yum ,yum eat-em -up .Go good with beer . 8)

I think yellow perch and walleye are related. Both are DELISH!
Living on Florida's gulf coast I have so many fresh fish to choose from but still dream of fresh walleye and haddock

[Texas Ranger]

Camped out on the shores of Sam Raburn many years ago.  Camping friends were cajun, and she produced coubion, spelling not right, but Court Bullion, made with sacolet, white perch/crappie. over a outdoor wood fire.  Best fish dish I ever ate.

Deep South Dish: Cajun Coubion - Courtbouillon