Show Notes
In this episode, Nick Otto shares his experiences ice fishing in Michigan with his family. He discusses the challenges and joys of ice fishing, including the techniques he learned for catching fish, the process of filleting them, and the excitement of cooking the catch. The conversation highlights the importance of family bonding through outdoor activities and the satisfaction of preparing and enjoying a meal together.
Takeaways:
- Ice fishing can be a fun family activity.
- Using electronics can enhance the fishing experience.
- Filleting fish requires practice and technique.
- Preparing for fishing trips involves gathering the right gear.
- Cooking fish with pickle brine keeps it moist and flavorful.
- Sweet potato fries can be made crispy with a double fry method.
- Family bonding is strengthened through shared outdoor experiences.
- Learning from mistakes is part of the fishing journey.
- Being efficient with gear is crucial for a successful trip.
- The joy of catching and cooking your own food is rewarding.
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Show Transcript
Nick Otto (00:01.932)
The temp is single digits. A dad and a bunch of kids walk onto some clear ice with a sled mounted up with gear that is seemingly all tangled amongst itself. They drill some holes in the ice, they put some bait in the water, and they have a little bit of luck. Luckily, they have their guide show up an hour later.
and get them on some fish and get them some much needed insight. Join us on this conversation as Nick talks about the calamity situation turned efficiency on this episode of Hunt for...
Nick Otto (00:52.174)
Well, hey folks, beautiful evening. Now, morning actually. I don't even know what I'm talking about. Beautiful morning here in Michigan. It's been a very cold couple days. This is dropping on Thursday. I'm actually recording this on Wednesday. We are off school today due to, I would say more temps than snow. It is bitter. It is bitter cold out there.
I know there's going to be some people that are still out there grinding away at the urban archery deer season still going on. Host of the Michigan Wild. We're looking at Nate Roosevelt. He's still out there. He said he was grinding. He said he was going to go out, I think, on Monday. Not sure if he actually did or not. You'll have to hear that from him. But anyway, it has been cold here for the past couple of days.
Pardon me. But with these days off that we've had from school, it has been a wonderful opportunity to get onto some hard ice. We've been without for several years here in Michigan. Up north, you've been able to find lakes and continue to do ice fishing. I picked this up like three years ago when we had a nice big chill. Myself and a neighbor.
We got the equipment, we got some rods, we got an auger, just a hand auger and just some tip-ups and we got all this equipment and we said, all right, let's go do this. Let's play around on the ice. Let's see if we can get the kids involved. We used the deer pop-up blind if we wanted to do some jigging and ultimately we found a little success but what we did find was a great time on the ice. Kids pulling sleds.
Always clearing out the drilled holes. They got to make sure that they're meticulously cleaned and having fun just getting bait wet. So that was ultimately what we wanted to do and now having this opportunity come to us again, we were able to get on those lakes. So it was a bit of a refresher course. Good buddy of mine, quite talented in the outdoor world, John Smith.
Nick Otto (03:14.648)
He's got a YouTube channel. I gotta look that up and I'll make sure to put that in the links. John is an avid coyote hunter. He was also on hunt for here several years ago. We talked a little bit about deer and coyote hunting, but now we're into some ice fishing. So he was essentially our guide. He was going to hold my hand and show me what to do. We wanted to be a little more successful.
than what we've been in the past. He took us to a spot that in the in the region in the area is really known as you just drop your line. Once you find the depth, you're just going to hook up on the pan fish. So we get to the lake, we pull out onto the lake and through our communications, I got there earlier. I had some equipment, I had the kids, had no vexlar, I had no pop up. I did have the big heater.
That's one thing that I will bring if I'm ever invited on an ice fishing trip is I do bring a big heater for the pop-up. So I did have that. But we get onto the ice and I'm like, hey, let's just not sit in the truck here. Let's go do something. So we drill a couple holes and we start getting some bait wet. And then the boys start talking about, I'm getting cold. We didn't have a pop-up. So I was going to give them the option. I'm like, hey, we could put these tip-ups in the water. We grind some holes and then.
see if we can't catch anything big on some minnows or we can, you know, go back to the truck and hang out there. They want to do the tip ups. Sweet. we, we drilled the holes, we put the tip ups out. Essentially it was cold enough that the ice was freezing over. We put the tip ups in and shoot, you know, not 10 minutes later, there's already a crust of ice over top of that hole. So we get the jigging going. I learned through then a text message, drop your bait all the way to the bottom and then crank up two or three feet.
and I bet you'll find some. So even in our blind setup, even in our very amateur hour scenario, we did hook up on some fish, pulled up a bluegills and the big success story at least was my son. He hooked up on a perch and he had never seen a perch. He was expecting bluegill.
Nick Otto (05:42.574)
coming out of that hole. And when he pulled up his little perch man, he was so proud. He's like, look at this thing. Look how interesting it is. It's not like any of the others. He was thrilled. So he pulled that off and I mean, it was a small one, but I couldn't, I couldn't say no to the kid. So we put it in the bucket. He watched that little perch for a good long while. He was very proud of that catch.
We did hook up on a second perch. I think there was probably a little bit of a school that came through because we got two and then for the rest of the time we didn't see the perch again. So apparently whatever random luck we had, we hooked up on those. So we had, and then another bluegill got put in there. So we had four fish blind on that Sunday. So I was at least like, hey, you know what? We can find fish. Soon John showed up.
with his two older daughters, popped up the pop-up. had, it's like a six to eight man style double hub shanty, like with the thicker walls. This is no deer pop-up. This is made for what we're doing. Put down the ice spikes, it, strapped it down. He drilled a whole bunch of holes right through the middle of it, chairs on either side, and it became then a party time.
we got situated in there. had the vexlar going, which that was kind of my, my reason for going is I wanted to learn a little bit more about using electronics on the ice. I wanted to learn a bit about finding fish. This was just a refresher course, essentially from someone who was avid, like really like, Hey, let's, let's get this guy suited up. so I learned, learned a lot, a lot about that.
in a lot of these areas to find fish, just drop it all the way to the bottom, pull it off, drop it all the way to the bottom, come up like two or three feet and hopefully, hopefully things start happening. And that's that was what really happened on that Sunday. Boys were still getting the knack of it. lot of a lot of bait being stolen, those soft, soft bites on those rods. It's hard for the kids to pick up on those. I don't have like the
Nick Otto (08:06.43)
end extenders, the super sensitive coils. I had some, but they broke off again because of the voice and how they use our equipment. We snapped off a lot of tips, but we were just running straight rods. So they had to really look for just that little bit of a jerk to be able to hook up on them. Unfortunately, we lost a lot of bait. We fed the fish, but there was a good portion of fish that we were able
to pull up. I did a lot of where I would hook the fish and then one boy is like, I want to this one in. And so then I would just pass off the reel and then reel up that one or let him reel it up. So they felt felt involved and we had a really good fun time doing that. Using that vexlar, we could see like when like a stress fracture would go across the lake and you'd hear it like hit near us.
and would see the fish scatter. You'd see them either drop super low or kick off to the sides and clear out. And that was then was a good time to like, well, hey, we snapped off a jig head on one rod. Let's tie another one back on. Let's pull out a few snacks. You could see if there was no action, we took advantage of that during to do stuff, a top ice. And then all of sudden you'd see those fish come back.
and John would say, hey, they're all below us. And then everybody would drop line in. There was several times where two people are hooked up and pulling up. We also had where a fish would get a little rambunctious and spin around and wrap up a few lines. So then the person would bring their fish up and would have two additional lures. So that was always fun to then untangle all of that, making sure that we weren't pulling that open bales so that we could get untangled.
I tell you, a lot of fun was had on that Sunday and I felt confident at least to return to that same spot, having the knowledge that I knew. I thought I could then come back to that spot and do some really quality fishing with the intel that I had. So we finished up that night with, with a limit. We, well, very close. and again, 19 gills. had.
Nick Otto (10:29.71)
two perch and we had a lone crappie. So we felt very good about that. Brought them home and then became or then began to clean them. We got to do the fillets. And you know, it's been a little while since I've filleted fish and you know, that, that phrase, you know, it's like riding a bike. Like it's going to take you.
two or three times to kind of, you're going to wobble a little bit. You might like tip over once, but then once you get it, you just got it down. And that was kind of how it was. It was like riding a bike when it came to filet and fish. My first couple, I do apologize to those fish. I may not have gotten as much as what I should off those, off those filets, but I did my darnedest. And after a while I was moving very swift and I was getting every little morsel of meat that I could off those filets.
yeah, carcasses are going into our compost. So, saved the, saved the heads and spines and, and, not so much the scales, scales. We just, I just pitched those, but anyway, majority of the fish is going to be going into our composter. And so as the season here warms up, we're to get those in the ground underneath some of our plants for, for our garden this year that we want to put in. So.
utilizing what we got the waste knot, whatnot mentality continues. But as I was filleting, I know it's a little bit hard to do this audibly instead of visually, but I found a couple of techniques that as I was filleting fish to make sure that I got the most that I could. First is on these pan fish, I tried to get as high on the forehead
as I could. Trying to really get as far forward where that fillet began, where those muscles really connected up into the head, just outside of that bony cap where that bone shield is on their head. And I would drop the knife through there. Pretty much pointed at the, you know, for a bluegill, at that gill cover, at that one bluegill that was right there. That's where I was kind of aiming for.
Nick Otto (12:50.688)
And then I would try to come below and again, I would make another angled, trying to get as much of the belly as I could as well. So doing that gave me a starting point. Then turning the fish towards me. I would then I was using a filet knife. This one's actually one that we've that I've had for quite a while. It's not a Rapala. It is a Victorinox filet knife.
It got thrown into the mix through some of the farm knives and because it was different, not a lot of people used it. So I inherited that filet knife and that's been a wonderful addition. Sharpens up really nice. man. Along with this cold weather comes the cold. So sorry if I'm coughing.
Nick Otto (13:44.44)
But I found if I ran that knife right along the top where the pectoral, not the pectoral, the dorsal fin is where those spines are. If I would run along those spines and I would then basically poke into the ribs, I could find where I could get the very top of that fillet to start really close to that dorsal line.
And then once I got past the rib cage, I could push all the way through the fish to those underlying fins and then follow the spine all the way down to the back tail. And I was getting a very nice, clean cut when I would get to there. Hardest part for me was the section right behind, I guess more tail of
the rib cage, there was that that transition from the last rib to then being a lot of the tail muscle there that it that it took me to to be able to get all of those morsels. So I lost a little bit. I'm like the first two or three fish. And I thought I need to get need to get better at this. And so I found that if I actually then once I made that cut along the top, peel up the top and then make that cut coming backwards.
actually cut back toward the rib, I was able to then get that last little bit and then peel over top of the ribs, get down into the belly and then cut down at the bottom. That gave me a really nice full fillet. The bigger the fish, the easier it was to handle some of the dinkers that we decided to keep. You know, that was the learning method there. There was having to get the best that we could out of those fish.
And we, ended up with some, good fillets, flip them over. And again, you know, some people are going to tell me that they do things differently. I really wanted to on this batch scale all the fish, leave skin on. I enjoy the skin on. And I've done that with a bunch of fish throughout like the summer and then fillet, you know, but at the same time I was outside. I had a pan of water.
Nick Otto (16:02.796)
that I would get cloudy with all the scales and then pitch it. What I didn't want to do was make a huge mess in the house and I didn't want to send all those scales down my drain. I have one of those drains where it is an ever flowing drain. It all drains down to where it goes out to the drain field. However, it does have a long way to go from our kitchen all the way down to the drain field.
And so about once a year, it's nice to take a big auger all the way through it and clear out anything. We try not to put any animal fats all the way down into our drain because yeah, they using the hot water, they do soften up, but by the time they get a little ways the way down, it's like that cholesterol that you see on medical ads where now it's going to get tighter and tighter and tighter. So to be able to run an auger all the way through
once a year just to clean that pipe out. It makes sure that we continue to flow things. I didn't want to add now a bunch of fish scales that are going to then pack up into whatever was already started. So unfortunately, I didn't scale a lot of the fish. If there's somebody out there who's got a really good method on scaling fish, or at least to keep it cleaner, I am definitely game to learn about that. So this way, I ended up taking the fillet
making sure I had meat side up and then I would basically fillet the skin off. A couple of findings I had. First is that as I was skinning, I would push really hard trying to make sure that I would get as much of the meat as possible. But I found that I was then digging into the scales. And so there was a couple of fillets where I legitimately scaled the fish, leaving the skin on because of how hard I was pressing the blade.
to the cutting board between the meat. I mean, I was like, well, shoot, I'll take that. It works out all right. And then we just cleaned up those scales afterwards on the cutting board. But then I found if I had just a good medium pressure and angling that blade to ride above the scales, I got a much cleaner cut and yet was able to take all the meat and separate all the meat from those scales and skin.
Nick Otto (18:30.766)
The more you do it, the better off I got. And so yeah, by the end of it, I felt like I had a real good knack at filleting out panfish. It felt really good to do that. I had an iced down bowl of water and I would then take the now clean fish and put it into that ice cold water. A couple of reasons. One, there was still a few scales that were
They would shuffle off and then to be on the fillet. And so by throwing the water, it just helped separate those out. Those scales eventually went to the bottom and then I was able to pull the fillets out much cleaner. It leached out the last little bit of blood that was on those fillets, made them cleaner, but at the same time, like held the integrity of that fillet. It felt I didn't want to just like let them hang out dry on the the counter. But yeah, getting them back into some water, it worked out really well.
That first batch, we ended up keeping fresh. So anyway, I drained those out, made sure all the water was off of them, and then put those in a bag. Those went in the fridge because then we cooked them the next day. That'll be chapter two. We'll talk about that here in just a minute. But we had a great time getting that first batch, and then we were able to then take that success and ride that into
the next time we went out. So Monday was an in-service day for our school. I had to go in and do professional development. So teachers had to report, kids didn't have to. But that was as we were working away, I'm looking out the window and all I'm seeing is snow fly. All I'm seeing is wind blow. was gonna be, the writing was on the wall that we were gonna have a snow day. And so.
As much attention was given to our task at hand, there was also the big murmur of, we even gonna have to come in tomorrow? I already started making plans. I was on that way home from school. I went all the way down to the bait shop and got a few items to make us a little bit more self-sustainable. Got a couple more jigs, got a third rod.
Nick Otto (20:56.334)
because I only had two rods and I have three boys so it's really hard to share and was able to get that rod, you those jigs and then I got some ice bikes for our pop-up. I was essentially wanting to make us be able to go solo even in tough conditions so that's where we started. So here comes
The night before, Monday, seven o'clock, we get the call that school has been called. We are not going in the next day. Yes, yes, we're gonna make things possible.
We get up, have some breakfast. It was kind of a little bit of slow start and we got to, yeah, we got to the beach about 10.30 ish. So mid morning felt really good. had two of my three with me, my oldest in my middle.
We get out onto the ice and we already decided, hey, we're gonna make two trips. I can have a shorter sled. I have one of like the three footers, three or four footers. So I brought out the essential equipment to get us up and running. And then all the non-necessity stuff was gonna follow up in the next trip back. Having my sons get a little bit bigger has been.
Uh, quite nice. There's, there's still a big load on dad as far as set up and getting things the way they need to be and being able to handle the heavy, awkward stuff. But as far as, go get the bucket. Hey, could you grab the chairs? Hey, could you grab this? Like they're now able to handle a much bigger load than, what they have in years past. So.
Nick Otto (23:01.01)
As I was setting up the pop-up, I kept the middle boy with me. He was my assistant and I was able to send the oldest one, he's 10, back to get the few remaining items and hike them back. So as we were doing that, I put the pop-up up. I had two ice anchors. I ordered some online and they just, they weren't going to get here in time. So that's why I picked up a couple more.
when I was at the shop, so now we'll have more than enough.
to get on the ice. But picking those up, man, it was really good. I just used my drill bit. I forget which size. I just sized up close, drilled down into the hole, started the ice auger. I didn't have any of the guy lines set on this pop-up tent, but what I did have was a couple extra straps. And I had my tie boss with me, which is an easy strap company out of Ohio.
working with them, they helped me out with a gamble system. they, know, adapting this into using it more than just, you know, in my deer shop was really nice. So hooked that on, tied that down, and that made that pop-up blind pretty secure. That'll also be a story here in just a little bit. But we kicked the flaps out on the bottom through as much snow as we could. There was a light, you know, coating of snow all over the lake. So we kicked that out, got inside and I drilled three holes.
Three big 10 inch holes, they were nice and big. Got our chairs situated, got the heater running, and before long, we had all of our necessary items inside. I've got these little camping lights that I tried out. It was, I don't know, or miss on whether those lights actually really made a difference. The boys had fun stringing them up like Christmas lights, just so we could see a little bit more in there. Learning, you know what, even though it's bright out,
Nick Otto (25:02.04)
bring yourself a headlamp just because if you are in a blacked out blind like we were in just for tying stuff back on or getting little finicky hooks out of fish like having a little bit of light is always very helpful. So anyway, that was one tip that we needed is we need to be able to get a little bit more light. We got set up in there, three rods, three dudes having the time of their life. We brought snacks of course.
We had a great time just getting bait wet. We'd have some tangles, we'd have some laughs. Great time. We started out with just one of my burners. So my, I don't know what they're called, but anyway, I brought out the big 20 pound propane tank. And this unit sits on top of that. You hook right into it and it's got two big blast burners on there. It's old school, but man, it works all the time.
There's I never worry about this thing having a slow startup. It works out perfect. So anyway, started out with just one of those going because we were in a little six by six. I'm like, this will be fine. But the amount of draft that was going in there like, shoot, let's let's start up the second one. Middle boy was really his hands. He got his hands wet. And so, yeah, he got a little bit of a chill in his hands. That was getting him warm again. I really had to turn on that second burner. But once we got that second burner going.
He felt a little bit more like himself. We were also noticing like our feet would get cold. And I think it was just because they were sitting on the ice. I need to bring out some foam or something just to have their feet to sit on so that they can get their feet off the ice. That thought of, we should probably bring this. We should add this to our list. And, you know, there was always this more, more, more aspect, but I think one of the biggest lessons that I'm taking off
of ice fishing kind of revolves into a little bit of like mobile deer hunting is being efficient with your gear as far as how you're going to package it, how you're going to pack it, how are you going to get it out there and get it back. Our logistics is subpar. I'm going to be honest with that. Us getting out there, it's a show.
Nick Otto (27:26.966)
It's a show for a lot of people. and we, totally get that. And it's so we're glad to, to learn along the way. But yeah, I was already like, man, how do we make this a little bit easier? A lot of equipment is odd shaped. It's long. It's, you know, breakable. You got to be careful with this end. You got to be careful with that end. How can we make things a little bit more streamlined? So that's been in my thought too of like, how do I get.
rods out there without breaking them. How can I bring the necessary equipment without bringing too much? Just went through my fishing. I would bring out my tackle box. I've got my tackle box is essentially a little case that holds three Plano boxes. So I've got two large Plano boxes in there and then a small one. And then just basically a little spot where I could put
some of the extra line in there in the box. And so now I'm thinking I'm not even going to bring that out. I'm just going to bring out the one little Plano box that I have that I now coagulated all the little ice fishing jinks into. That was that was just kind of like as I was piecing things together, I thought, man, this is one piece of equipment that if I didn't have to bring out, that would be good. What else did I learn? having
Just like in regular fishing, putting things on lanyards is also a good deal. Having things strapped to you so that if they do happen to fall on the ice, they don't continue to fall into the hole. On my lake that we were on, there's a Leatherman that is down in there. My Leatherman Wingman that I got from my brother. I'm very sad because I set that on my leg and got bumped and that
It shot off my leg, hit an angled piece of ice and slid straight into the hole. And my boys immediately, there was just this gasp like, and they look at me and I'm like, well, there it was. It was gone before we could even be sad. It just went right to the bottom. So I was without a Leatherman. Luckily my middle boy had his.
Nick Otto (29:52.654)
So I asked if I could hold onto his that I would do a better job of holding onto his. said, yeah, that's a good idea. So I put it in my pouch on my car hearts. And that way it was not going anywhere. A couple of times I thought like, I'll just set up my leg and immediately went, nope, back up into the chest pouch. We are not going to set that down. Even on a lake covered in ice, you can still lose items into the water. So unfortunately that was a,
I don't want to say an expensive lesson, but a sentimental lesson that I'm like, well, shoot, now I'm now I'm missing that. got to get me another multi-tool.
But that trip, we didn't have electronics. That trip, we did have a pop-up blind with heater, but we were able to get 11, 12 fish. We did a respectable amount of work. Now on a spot that we had already explored, on a spot we had kind of already figured out, but we were able to get out there and be successful on our own.
That was a big one. I feel like now we're maybe a few steps away from being able to venture on to an unknown lake and do some work as far as finding fish. I think it'd be a little bit better if we would get not like an occasional warm day or maybe not as frigid. That would make it easier to drill a hole and pick away in a spot and see if that's going to be a great spot for us to be at or if there's going to be no fish there.
But at same time, I'm feeling like we're getting a routine going. The problem with ice fishing is that it is a very short lived window. So as soon as you get a routine, you got to break out of work life. You got to break out of sports life. You got to break. You got to get out of that in order to get onto the ice. So hopefully we've got a few more trips in us before we have to call it quits because of the ice conditions.
Nick Otto (32:03.854)
But that was, would say, a just a great surprise couple days that we had where we were able to get out on the ice and be successful. So, yeah, I got I got 22 fillets in my freezer. And I did that a way that I guess all the older I don't want to say older folks, the old school way is freezing them in water. So same time with that water.
A good friend of mine, he will put his fillets in a quart bag and then fill it up with water, seal it up and then freeze it like that. And by freezing it, by freezing the fillets in the water, it preserves those fillets better. At least that's the understanding. So anyway, we're going to have that be at least an experimental thing that we do. Cause I do have my chamber vac. The chamber vac was down in the shop.
So I, I didn't want to walk outside. So that's why we ended up going with the old school Ziploc bag method. But to be able to essentially do the same thing out of a chamber vac that I could do with, you know, a quart size bag full of water. It would definitely save on space. Cause I mean, it's like a softball size thing that we're dealing with with the bag full of water.
If we can turn that into something a little bit more slimmer by using the chamber back, that might be might be a good idea. So anyway, we've started our stockpile. We got 22. We feeling good about it. And yeah, we're we're ready for our loading up for our next fish fry. Now, let's talk a little bit about the fry that we actually did. We did what would have been essentially that Monday night. So we got them Sunday.
We were busy doing a bunch of other stuff, so I didn't fry them up then, but it was a great time to take my new beef tallow that I've rendered all down. I've got it into a container that I can then pull from. Found a couple of things. So I find if I take that whole container, it's basically a bucket. I mean, that's exactly what it is, a steel bucket. But I set that into the sink.
Nick Otto (34:33.346)
hit the sink with hot water and I let that come up the sides of that bucket and it starts to soften the outside of that tallow block. I then just run a big knife down the middle, do a big X so now I've got quarters and then eventually I can be able to pull up each quarter, put that into the Dutch oven and then have it melt down and then heat up. So we used our animal fat on our animals this time. am
I was very pleased with how that was all working out.
Time to fry that. So got my oil hot, but as it was heating, I took all the filets that I did off of our first batch and those went into pickle brine. You heard that right. I took a jar of pickles, took the pickles out and all the brine went into a bag with all the filets. And I would roll it around probably every five minutes and I had it in there.
between well 15 and 20 minutes. So like three folds over into these fillets. I've talked about this a lot. I've talked about being able to use this pickle brine on either on like squirrel like small quarters or use this on my fish fillets. And again, being able to just prove a method to my madness. It really does a great job. It helps keep those fillets moist.
keeps them from overcooking once they get into the oil. At the same time, that filet has just the right amount of seasoning on the inside as far as like you can taste the salt. You don't necessarily taste all the pickling in it, but at the same time, you have that seasoned filet now instead of only adding the seasoning to the batter or the breading.
Nick Otto (36:37.336)
So they went into the pickle brine, drained that back out. I put it in a bag. I've been using, he's a local guy, Skeeter's fish fry mix. People have had really good luck with Drake's. mean, Drake's has been used for eons and it becomes a thing of which one would you rather do? Would you rather do the wet brine or wet batter or would you rather do the dry batter?
Finding I'm a dry batter guy. I like that process a little better. I like the thinness of the breading. I love the emphasis on the filet. Yeah, it's not that traditional beer batter where it's coated, but at the same time, like I've lived my whole life here in Michigan and there's something about like that Louisiana cornmeal that just really gets me going.
So that's what I used off of the Skeeters was their cornmeal mix.
took a bunch of those filets, put them in a bag, shook them around and got them all nice and coated. Those didn't go from the bag right to the oil. What I've been told is that you give it a chance to let that meal get hydrated and it adheres a little bit better. So after I got them shook out of the bag, I pulled the filets and laid them on a rack and...
let that happen and I found that I had better adhesion after a minute of sitting there before going into the oil. So all those filets got dusted in the cornmeal, laid on this rack. Rack got brought to, essentially is going to be my left side, no, it's my right side, oil in the middle and the finish rack on the left. I hit my oven for warming.
Nick Otto (38:35.07)
and I put that at, I think that's like 170 degrees because I knew not only was I gonna do the fish, but I was going to actually do some sweet potato fries as well. So actually, yeah, I should probably back up and do my whole order of operations. I cut my fries off four sweet potatoes. That seemed to be enough for our trial run. Rinsed as much of the starch off as I could from
from the actual fries themselves and then try to dry them out. Lay them on some paper towel, kind of matted them down. Those go into a plastic bag, those go to a Ziploc. And I know I just said that I rinsed off the starch, but what then you have to do is then you have to coat it with something so that they don't stick together. So I went into my reservoir and I found, my pantry, and I found that we have potato starch.
So I just did maybe a tablespoon of, or maybe two of potato starch into that same bag and rolled it around and coated each fry of sweet potato. It sounds crazy. You just washed off starch and then you just re-added starch. Yes, however, by removing the starch off of the sweet potatoes, which there's not a lot.
in the sweet potato anyway. It's not like a russet or it's not like a Yukon gold where your water becomes murky because of that starch. This didn't take nearly as long or nearly as many washes. But I got those cleaned of their starch and then applied a dried starch, which then coated each of the fries. Now, having that little bit of coating dropped into hot oil,
I went for, maybe a minute, minute and a half. Essentially, the fry would hit the bottom and then it would start to cook through and then it would go to the top. As soon as it would rise to the top, I would then spoon those off. They were not done. But the idea is, is I was gonna go with the double fry. When you get really crispy fries, it's because they're done with a double fry method. And so that's what I was going for on these sweet potato fries.
Nick Otto (41:00.078)
So having that little bit of a coating kept those fries from sticking together, was able to get those into the oil. They would float. would spoon them out, put them on the rack. And so they were then done with their first round. I would put those off to the side. Now began the fish. Fish had already got their cornmeal on them, brought those to the right side, new rack to the left side, started dropping the fish in.
Really doing like the clockwise method, making sure I didn't drop a filet on top of another filet. I didn't want them to stick together. Not that they really would stick together very well. But dropping those in, I did like three or four batches and would get those, bring those back on, hit them with some salt. Once I had the fish done, those went into the warming oven. I had them sit on warm because then I wanted to finish the sweet potato fries. Taking those fries.
that were not sticking together, they would then drop into the hot oil and then I would finish those up based on color. I would test those on the other side and man, you had a crispy outside and a soft inside cooked all the way through. These were home run sweet potatoes. I mean, if I would have had this kind of finish on a regular fry, man, I would be stoked. I'm still trying to play a little bit with fries.
But this sweet potato method with the double fry, boom, that made it just work out awesome.
So we get all those done. I lay both sheet pans onto the island. I don't think a plate was grabbed for probably about five minutes because it just, was almost, when I set those down, it was like ringing the dinner bell. And it was as much as I want to say, family style, it more trough style. My wife and I stood on one side, the boys saddled up on the other and we just picked.
Nick Otto (43:05.482)
away at the fish and we picked away at the fries. Finally, we put some plates together because we wanted to go sit down so that we got those out. But shoot, within a matter of minutes, a whole limit's worth of fish was completely gone. Now there's five of us, but it was fun for those boys to see that go from beginning to finish. They have.
They've seen that process with deer. They've seen that process with squirrel, but really having a hand in bringing back their fish. My middle boy was like, where's my perch? Luckily, I was able to keep those separate. I knew that was going to be a thing and he got to eat his little perch. I put those filets off to the side.
Nick Otto (44:14.061)
Nick Otto (44:29.454)
So yeah, I put those filets off to the side. That's also, think, another hot tip for a cook or for a dad who's going to be cooking up game. If your son or daughter or niece or nephew or whoever you went is very keyed in on their catch, put that off to the side so they can enjoy personally their catch. Does it take a little bit of memory? Does it take a little bit of wherewithal?
Absolutely. But at the same time, he crunched on that. I mean, could see he brought it up to his lips and he took that bite and there was just a smile on his face. He saw that from beginning to end. I know there's more to sustenance. I know there's more to nutrition. I know there's more to why we do what we do. But witnessing that alone, witnessing the feeling.
that that boy had. I can't think of a more emotionally nourishing bite that he took. He was proud of himself. He was happy with the catch. And that was, in essence, a very real victory bite. And he got to have that.
I'm still like, you know, there's, moments that you have with the dad where you see something happen and you're like, that's, that's a core memory. As much as he enjoyed that core memory, I think I got a core memory from watching his core memory. That was just super fun.
So we enjoyed that whole, the whole filets there. So Nick, did you have a tartar sauce, homemade tartar sauce to go with it? Nope, we ate it before I made it. So unfortunately we did not get to go with a tartar sauce. Now, if you go all the way back to episode two of the Hantevour, me and Dustin,
Nick Otto (46:37.166)
Uh, when, when he was cohost here, we broke down big time gills and pan fish. And I, uh, I let loose on a tartar sauce that I made up that I really liked. And I still hold to that one true today. Uh, I sometimes have to go back to that, the show notes there and, uh, and look at it, but that is a bang up. If you're going to make, if you're going to have tartar sauce, make your tartar sauce.
Add what you want to whether you want it more sour because you got more of the citrus in it. Whether you got it more spicy because you want to add some some heat to it. Doesn't matter which way you fold it. That you should just make your own when comes to stuff like that. So anyway, we didn't make our own. But at the same time, those sweet potatoes, those those fried fillets. Boom, they just hit the nail on the head.
So yeah, we're hoping for more ventures out on the ice. We're hoping to continue to stockpile so that when summertime comes, we can continue on with a big celebration of getting friends and family together and having a bounty of filets to be able to fry up. But yeah, we're going to continue on with that venture. If you plan on hitting the ice and trying to get some filets of your own, or if you're going to hunker down inside and cook up something that you've gotten.
from this previous season, make sure the knife that you are using is very sharp.
