Isle Royale Forums

Fresh fish for supper at IR is possible, perhaps likely, but not a given. I'm wondering how some of you plan for this, and how you actually cook the fish you catch. Do you take enough food to cover yourself in case you don't catch fish? Do you take oil and fry the fish; how much oil; how do you deal with used oil? Do you plan jambalaya, soups, stews, or other dishes to which you can add small chunks of the fish for cooking?

A great question. If we plan on fishing, we count that as one meal and don't bring something to fill-in should the fishing not turn out so great. Worst case scenario, we figure, we'll just live off of snacks or left-overs.

As far as how we prepare it, we just do the Shore Lunch thing. It's delicious always!

I'm planning on cooking mine as a Thai-Style fish soup. I'll bring along some shallots, garlic, jalapeno, 1T oil, cilantro, chicken bouillon, lime juice, and fish sauce. If I don't catch fish I can use the ingredients in other meals.

I take ample food to cover all my meals. If I catch/cook fish, I will be be bringing food home.

We do one of three things for cooking:
Bake it is foil at a site with a grill, lemon, butter and dill.
Fry using oil and Shore Lunch
Boil in water dip in butter.
We don't count on fish, but we seem to catch some on every trip.

We either saute/fry the fillet in a pan with some oil, garlic, etc or my wife just cubes the fish meat and we grill it up that way.

We definitely plan on catching fish, but we usually carry a bit of extra food in case we don't find any...we kayak, so the extra weight is no biggie

we always fish, always catch fish, always plan to catch fish, but always have a back up meal just in case we don't, or have the time. The last 2 years we ate fish pretty much every other day. It was all prepared the same, lightly breaded with shore lunch and pan fried in oil. I try to not use much oil when cooking that way I don't have to dispose/pack out the left over oil.
Last year on Belle Isle we caught 2 salmon, one coho and one pink, we fried the pink with shore lunch and cooked the coho over wood on the grill there, both were amazing but in the end there were no left over pink and we had one whole fillet that was not eaten of the coho. we couldn't move after that we were making ourselves eat as much as possible so we didn't waste the fish but you can only eat so much in one sitting

We cooked these skin side down on the grill. Took about 45 min. for the big one, cause we couldn't flip them. No we didn't catch them, but were a fine present from some fishermen on Belle Isle .

We tried a new way to bake fish. We dipped the fillet in Shore Lunch and then put it in foil with butter ect. and baked it.
It was awesome.

I usually filet mine and thrown them on the grill or in a pan with a little oil. If the fish aren't big enough to filet, I'll put the whole fish on there. Usually the skin separates from the eat and it's easy to pick out with a fork.

Thanks for everyone's feedback. I posed a similar question to the folks at Shore Lunch, and they were nice enough to forward a recipe incorporating fresh fish with their soup mix:

Campfire Cheddar Potato Fish Soup
Ingredients and Shopping List
• 1 package Shore Lunch® Cheddar Potato Soup Mix
• ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper (optional)
• 2 pounds white fish fillets, skin removed, cut into bite size pieces (may substitute
with salmon)
Directions
1. In a large heavy bottomed soup pot, bring 8 cups of water to a rolling boil.
2. Whisk in Shore Lunch® Cheddar Potato Soup Mix and crushed red pepper.
3. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Add fish, gently stir, cover and cook, until fish is done, about 5-10 minutes.

I let the folks who just came back from L. Superior fishing do all the work. They filet it, cook it and say, "Oh by the way, help yourself." I had some lake trout Saturday evening at the Chippewa Harbor dock. Lucky me. Took my calorie count up to about 3000 for the day.

.....From a power boater?........say honest! )

I bring enough food just in case the fishing is bad. If I bring food home, so be it. I would rather not go hungry.

jerry wrote:I let the folks who just came back from L. Superior fishing do all the work. They filet it, cook it and say, "Oh by the way, help yourself." I had some lake trout Saturday evening at the Chippewa Harbor dock. Lucky me. Took my calorie count up to about 3000 for the day.

I like stories like this. Me and my party have done the same.

ETA: Fed hikers fish, that is...

Here are a couple from recent trips. Our trolling on the big water has always proven successful and provided more than enough fish for dinner!