Broiled bass with ginger-scallion oil

Here's another recipe for all of you wiper fans.  Fish tacos are great, but sometimes, you just have to switch things up.  This recipe is heavily inspired by one from Food & Wine, but I'm not going to subject you to a ridiculous story, a bunch of pop-ups, and whatnot before getting to the action:

Step 1    

In a bowl, combine 6 thinly sliced scallions, 2 Tbsp fresh grated ginger, 2-3 cloves minced garlic, and a pinch of crushed red pepper. In a saucepan, heat 1/6 cup vegetable oil until shimmering. Pour the hot oil over the scallion mixture, and stir in 2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice, 1 tsp soy sauce, and 1 tsp salt.

Step 2    

Preheat the broiler. Brush the fillets on both sides with some of the scallion oil. Arrange on a broiler pan skinned side down; broil until just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Transfer the fillets to plates, and spoon some scallion oil on top.

Full disclosure: when I did this, the kitchen started to fill with smoke from the broiling process.  I think that in the future, I'll either grill the fish or bake it in a hot oven instead.  If you're worried about your fish sticking to the grates when you grill, place it on top of thinly sliced pieces of lemon instead of directly on the grill grates.  No muss, no fuss, and adds a little pizzazz to your fish.

How to make fish tacos

The only known reader of this blog is a malcontent who's tired of hearing about wiper fishing.  Why does she keep reading it then?  Much like the number of licks necessary to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

In an effort to please our reader though, here's something fishing related but entirely different: a recipe.  So, without further ado, here's how you turn your catch into fish tacos.

Obviously, you start by cleaning the fish.  I'm no great hand at filleting, so you can just find a YouTube video for whatever species you're dealing with.  Trust me, it's not terribly difficult, but it will be a lot easier watching it done before diving in.

Once I've got some fillets, I like to soak them in milk.  This will draw out any muddy, gamey, fishy, or otherwise untoward flavors.  Not every fish needs this step, but as far as I know, it can't hurt.  I generally give the fillets (or fish chunks) a good milk bath for a few hours to overnight in a plastic container in the fridge.

I like my fish tacos with a red cabbage slaw that's vinegar-sauced as opposed to mayonnaise-slathered because, let's face it, mayo is as gross as ketchup.  This isn't the exact recipe that I used, but it will get you started.  I can't give you all of my secrets...  Regardless, this is a good step to take care of while the fish mellows out in the milk.

Next, you need to make some beer batter.  This part is super-simple: mix equal volumes of flour and beer until the batter is smooth.  You can use any type of beer that you want, but I went with Corona to be ironic and evoke a Pacific fish taco vibe.  You should also season your batter at this point.  Let your personal preferences guide this step.  You can go simple (salt and pepper), spicy (a good Cajun or creole seasoning), classic (Old Bay), or whichever way strikes your fancy.

At this point, heat some oil in a skillet, rinse off your fish, cut it into inch-wide strips if you'd like, and coat it in the beer batter.  Be careful adding the fish to the hot oil, and start frying!

After 2 or 3 minutes, check the bottom to see how things are going.  When the fish is golden brown, give it a flip and cook the other side.

Now, this is hot work, so don't forget to stay hydrated:

Place your fried fish on a paper towel-lined plate to blot off the excess oil, and then start building your tacos.  I like wheat flour tortillas instead of the more authentic ones made of corn because I'm from Pennsylvania.  I generally top the tortilla with a piece or two of fish, a splash of hot sauce, a scoop of slaw, and a dollop of homemade lime crema.

And there you have it.  You can go from a morning catch to a delicious dinner with a few ingredients and some prep time before lunch.  Stay tuned for our next post, which will be another recipe that doesn't involve frying but is equally delicious.

Fishing for wipers with live bait

It's been 8 days since I've gone fishing - yard work and family obligations trump free time shenanigans - so I decided to hit the Lake Monroe tailwaters again this morning.  It's been hot (80+ degrees) lately, so I didn't know what that was going to do to the wiper bite.  There was only one way to find out...

I started out by casting around with my Zoom Super Fluke/jig head combo from last time.  On my third cast through the steadily drizzling rain, something hit my rig hard and started peeling line.  I had my drag set tight, but it wasn't stopping this water donkey.  The fish fought like a wiper, and sure enough, I could see that's what I was dealing with the first time it surfaced.  After a fun fight, I got the fish near shore and managed to get my net around half of it (I need a bigger net!), and it's a good thing I did.  My line snapped basically as soon as I netted the fish, and I surely would have lost it and my lure like I did with the walleye a few weeks ago if I didn't have a landing net.

This fish was my personal best wiper, weighing in at 8 lb 1 oz.  You wouldn't think that an extra pound worth of fish would make it fight so much harder, but I guess that's more than a 10% increase in size.  If you added that much muscle to me, I'd be on the Brute Squad too.

Anyway, as you can tell from the picture above, I ended up catching another 8-lb wiper.  That one took some work though.

I jigged around with my soft plastic for a while but I wasn't getting any bites.  Actually, I kept snagging some busted fishing line on the bottom of the creek, so it's probably no wonder that I was catching any fish.  After I got bored with that, I decided to dip into my tackle box and try some other lures.  I had a lipless rattling crankbait on top, so that's where I started.  I cast it through the current a few times and eventually felt something small take it.  I reeled in a foul-hooked gizzard shad:

I was just about to throw him back when my old man brain finally realized the obvious.  I've been catching wipers on shad imitations, so why not try to catch a wiper on an actual shad?  I quickly tied a 1/8 oz jig head onto my line, nose-hooked the shad, and tossed it into the spillway current.  Almost immediately, a huge silver shape hit it and left me with an empty hook.  That was fun to see, but it would have been more fun to catch that water donkey.

I tied my crankbait back onto my medium action rod and added a silvery spoon to my ultralight and went shad fishing.  I managed to hook two more (one on each lure) and then rigged up my jig head again.  After nose-hooking the first of these shad, history repeated itself: cast, water donkey attack, empty hook.  Now, I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I could tell that this a good way to feed wipers but a poor way to catch them.  So, I took a different approach with my last shad and hooked it through the back.

I cast my bait into the back corner of the spillway, and mid-retrieve, a big fish hit it!  Not only that, but it felt like I'd hooked it good too, which was necessary because this guy was right in the thick of the current.  I eventually fought it into slack water and managed to coax it toward shore while it zig-zagged back and forth to try to get rid of me.  I managed to land him though, and ended up with my second personal best of the day: 8 lb 4 oz!

I had my limit on the stringer but was having so much fun that I went about trying to catch another shad.  I snagged one on my spoon, transferred it to my jig head and hit the raging water again.  This time though, the shad either came off or was snatched off.  When I reeled my line back in, I noticed that my hook was bent, and I decided to call it a day.  I'll definitely try fishing for wipers with live bait again.  I wonder if they'd go for a bluegill...

More Lake Monroe Spillway wiper madness

After losing my last big fish because I didn't have a landing net (and several before that one), I bought a folding net on Amazon.  I thought I got the one with the telescoping pole, but I'm old and confused and ended up with a stubby little one.  Instead of returning it though, I figured I could make due with my baboon-length arms or figure out a way to connect the net to a longer pole at some point.

Regardless, I loaded up my gear and headed for the Lake Monroe Spillway early this morning.  I had my trusty Goture lure already rigged on my medium-action pole, and I couldn't wait to see if there were any wipers left.  I don't know how long the wiper rush lasts, but the water is getting warmer, so I figured it was now or never.

I lost my lure on the first cast...

To state it mildly, this was devastating to me.  These things are magic.  I couldn't give up after 30 seconds though, so I decided to try to mimic the lure with what I had.  I ended up threading a pearl white Zoom Salty Super Fluke onto a 1/4-oz Spot Remover Jig Head and hoped for the best.  This setup wouldn't swim like the Goture, but it was roughly the same size and color.  It was also a little lighter, which I thought might prevent some snags because the water level was lower than last time.

To my surprise, I hooked into a nice wiper after the first few casts into the current.  I fought the fish toward shore, and as I reached for my landing net, it spit the hook and swam off...

I actually have video of this whole shenanigan.  You can hear how excited I am to have a fish on the line and taste my utter disappointment at losing another water donkey that should have been on my stringer.  If this blog gets 1000 subscribers, I'll release my blooper reel.  Otherwise, that reminder of my ineptitude stays with me.

At this point, I thought the day was going to be a bust.  I lost my Goture lure like Austin Powers lost his mojo, and I lost a decent fish.  It's a good thing I'm stubborn though.

I got another bite, and another, and another.  By 7 AM, I had landed (with the help of my net!) four big wipers and lost that many to poor hook sets.  The video below is me landing a 7 pounder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq4Dts3USzY

I managed to land another beast that was just as big too, which you can see below framed against a busted piece of bathroom vanity (the wife is remodeling):

Overall, I got my confidence back, had a ton of fun, got to practice my filleting skills (or lack thereof), and I'm looking forward to fish nuggets tonight :-)

The one that got away

Not every fishing trip is successful.  At noon today, it was sunny, hot (78 F), and buggy.  To make matters worse, the spillway was very crowded.  Normally, that would either be a recipe for me to find a different fishing spot in the shade and away from people or just go home and drink beer.  My hubris got the better of me though.  How could my Goture swimbait fail, even in a crappy spot away from the water actively spilling from the dam?

On my second cast, I hooked up with something.

It didn't feel like a wiper because it wasn't really fighting.  It didn't feel like a small fish either, though, because I still had to put some muscle into the retrieve.  Did I catch a boot or a lethargic catfish?

Not long after I started reeling in whatever was on my line, I saw it in the distance to my right near a nice Latino family.  It was a fish, it had surfaced, and it was lolled on its side.  I thought that maybe it had just become tangled in my line and was stunned because its gills were involved.  As I continued to reel though, I saw that I had foul-hooked it near the tail.

I got the fish toward the rocks near my feet and saw that it was an enormous walleye.  As visions of delicious fried fish surged through my brain, adrenaline surged through the walleye, which began to frantically thrash its body.  The net effect of all of this was to snap my line.  I watched the biggest walleye I'd ever personally seen swim away with my favorite swimbait still stuck in its nether regions.

How big was it?  I don't have a picture, so you'll just have to believe me when I say it was THIS BIG!!!

I don't know if this sequence of events cursed me for the afternoon or just shook my confidence, but the day was a bust.  I didn't catch anything else.  I lost a bunch of lures to snags.  I got tangled up in someone else's line.  I watched other people reel in water donkeys while I got skunked.

No fish, no pictures, no nothing.  I don't think this trip was a complete waste though.  If I had a landing net, I would have been able to put that walleye on my stringer.  The same could be said for a handful of wipers that I lost on previous fishing trips.  It's a lesson that I had to learn the hard way, but most valuable ones are.  Time to buy some more fishing gear!

Multi-species Monday: wipers, largemouth bass, and crappie at the Lake Monroe Spillway

After all of my recent fun at the spillway, I headed back on the morning of May 11.  I figured that I'd have another wild wiper fest on my Goture swimbait, but on my second cast, I got snagged and broke my line.  I reached into my tackle bag to find another, but apparently, I left them in the garage.

Life is cruel.

I tried to jury rig something that would work - one of the big Extreme Shad that I tried before, the largest circle hook that I had, and a 1/4 oz egg sinker - and actually got some bites.  I couldn't get a good hook up though.  At least not with a fish.  I hooked a rock just fine and was stuck again.

I tried to walk my line around the bank of the river a bit to see if I could get a good angle to free it, but nothing worked.  Swimbait rig #2 was gone.  On my walk though, I found a lipless crankbait that had washed up on the rocks.  Hey, free lure, why not try to use it?  On my first cast, I hooked into this 6.5-lb beauty and reeled her in:

With visions of fish tacos dancing through my head, I put the wiper on my stringer and tried to catch another.  Instead, I must have been casting through a school of crappie because I reeled in two in a row that were hooked in their backs:

 

I don't understand the physics behind how that happened in the water...twice no less...but I decided to target some different water so that it didn't happen again.  Not long after, something hit my lure hard, and I thought I had another wiper on my hands.  It didn't feel as big as the first water donkey that I landed, but it was still putting up a decent fight on a medium-action rod.  When I landed it though, it turned out to be a chunky largemouth bass!  I need to get a fish scale because this might have been the biggest largemouth that I've ever caught.

After a quick pic and release, I went back on the hunt for wipers but eventually lost my found lure.  What can I say?  It was a great #MultiSpeciesDay, but it was also a day of snags.  Either way, it was better than being stuck indoors.  I can't wait to wet a hook next time.

Lake Monroe Spillway wipers, the bite is on!

Due to work, family obligations, and crappy weather, it took me 10 days from my last WDA to get back out fishing.  I was able to plan a little better this time though to try to target another wiper.  I respooled the reel on my Shakespeare medium-action Ugly Stik with 12 lb test line and had time to order some Extreme Shad swimbaits from Amazon.  I was set!

I went back to the spillway on Lake Monroe at 6 AM, put one of the Extreme Shads on my biggest jig head, and cast into the current.  And then did it again, and again, and again.  Nothing.  I think I got a few takes, but I could never set the hook.  To be honest, I don't think I had the right jig heads for the Extreme Shad, which are enormous swimbaits for a guy like me who's usually reeling in sunfish.

While I still had the spillway to myself, I decided to try another of the Goture swimbaits that I used to catch my first wiper.  In no time at all, I set the hook in a beast wiper and started to fight it toward the shore.  This was a different battle than the first wiper I fought on my ultralight, and I was definitely feeling more in control.  I got the fish close enough to see, and then it spit the hook...

I'm not going to lie.  I mutter some curses, threw some rocks, and plopped down on the ground like a defeated man.

Thankfully, my stubborn streak kicked in, and I started casting the swimbait again.  That was a good decision because all of a sudden, the bite was on!  I caught fish, after fish, after fish:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If I look dazed and confused in these pictures, there's a good reason.  I have never, ever had a day of fishing go this well.  Not a single one of these fish was under 5 lb, and the biggest was a 7.5-lb, fat and sassy, 100% pure water donkey.  I think it was all the Goture swimbaits too.  Other folks had started to show up at the spillway, but I was the only one catching fish.  I saw them tossing out crank baits, flies, and even other swimbaits with similar coloring to mine, but no one was having any luck except me.  In fact, as soon as I got home, I ordered another pack.  If you're interested, check them out: https://amzn.to/3dNsY0x

Sometimes, fish shelter in place too

After another 3 days of hanging around the house since my last WDA, I needed to escape for a little while again.  It was the afternoon this time, and I didn't want to deal with the spillway, which tends to fill up as the day goes on.  Instead, I headed for a spot where the road crosses Lake Monroe, which separates an expansive cove from the lake proper by a big culvert.  I've seen people fish there before, so I figured it was a decent spot.

I started worm-and-bobber fishing on the lake side of the culvert but didn't catch anything.  It was quite windy, and my bobber would just end up back on the bank not long after I cast.  I tried to swap the bobber for some split shot to fish deeper in the water, but that was also a no go.  This went on for probably a half hour before I gave up and tried the cove side of the culvert.

I should have just started over there because on the first cast, BOOM, bass:

It wasn't a water donkey, but I'll take any fish over no fish.  He put up a running, jumping fight too, so on an ultralight rig, it was a fun fish to catch.  After that, I fished around the culvert pipe itself and landed a few panfish:

 

In the last picture, you can see part of a tree down in the water, and noticing that at the time, I decided to fish around the deadfall to see if anything was swimming around its nooks and crannies.  The first fish I caught was what I think is called a warmouth.  Regardless, he was a little fatty boombatty:

 

A variety of panfish followed, including a decent crappie (compared to the small fry).  Apparently, the fish were sheltering in place around this tree.

 

 

I'm not great at telling panfish apart.  Bluegill, green sunfish, pumpkinseeds, longear sunfish, etc. all look the same to me.  It doesn't help that they hybridize in nature too, but it also doesn't really matter.  I landed a bunch of fish (#MultiSpeciesDay) that were fun to catch and had a good time doing it.  None of them were keepers, but that just means I need to keep chasing the big one.  Until next time...

A freight train on an ultralight

Three days after the last WDA, I decided to try my hand at wiper fishing.  For the uninitiated, which was me not too long ago, a wiper is a hybrid between a white bass and a striped bass.  They look an awful lot like a striper, though they tend not to grow as large, and the dark stripes down the fish's sides aren't all parallel.  On wipers, one or more tend to be broken along the length somewhere.  It must be a HOX gene expression defect in the hybrid, but I digress...

Like many hybrid species, wipers display heterosis, or what is more commonly known as hybrid vigor.  In this case, the wipers grow faster than either parental species and are voracious eaters.  They also put up a heck of a fight when hooked.  I found this last point out the hard way.

Being an idiot, I tied a Goture lead head swimbait to an ultralight rod and reel combo spooled with 4-lb test line and went wiper hunting.  Now, I'm not used to jig fishing, especially with something that weighs almost 0.8 oz, so every time the lure hit a rock on my first few retrieves, I thought I was getting ready for a hook up.  It even got hung up on a rock and thought that I'd hooked a big one for a second.

When a wiper finally did take my bait, there was no mistaking it.

That fish inhaled the lure and took off like a freight train!  I had my drag set pretty tight to begin with, but it was peeling off line like the bail was still open.  After a long run, with me panicking and probably acting like an idiot, the reel stopped smoking, I tightened it up a bit more, and started the battle.  I would reel in a little and try to pull the fish toward the surface, and the fish would either dive, zag in a different direction, or both.  And this went on, and on, and on.  With light line and ultralight tackle, I couldn't horse the fish in.  I had to play the waiting game and just try to tire it out without breaking my line.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, the fish finally surfaced, and it looked like a monster to me.  The wiper must not have liked the look of me, because he tried a few more escapes before I eventually got it close enough to the rocks to grab.  I wish I had a landing net.

Now, there's nothing in the above picture for scale, but this was a 114 oz (6.9 lb), 21 in long wiper - easily the biggest fish I've ever landed (including a dogfish that I hauled in pier fishing in Myrtle Beach many moons ago).  What a water donkey!

With shaking hands, as much from excitement as from fatigue, I tossed the wiper in my bucket and headed straight home to turn it into fish tacos.  Let's be honest; I also texted this picture to everyone I know ;-)

It begins...

I'm not a fisherman.  That title would suggest that I consistently catch fish.  Instead, I just like to think of myself as a guy who likes to fish.  It's great if I can hook into something, but half of the fun is just being outside, getting some fresh air, and resetting my rage-meter back to zero.

That's the way it used to be at least.  Over the past few years, I've moved from Pennsylvania to New Jersey to Indiana, got married, and had a bunch of kids (not necessarily in that order).  In all that time, I've probably only been fishing a few times a year at the most.  I want to change that though, and I'm going to chronicle my adventures here.

A few weeks ago (April 22, 2020), I got so stir crazy from being cooped up inside due to COVID-19 that I jumped in my car and drove to the Lake Monroe spillway just south of Bloomington, IN.  I took my Shakespeare ultra-light Ugly Stik and some night crawlers, hoping to do some worm and bobber fishing, only to find that the flood gates were wide open, and the river was super high.  When life gives you lemons though, find some slack water, and hope for the best.  I skipped the bobber, added a split shot about 12 inches above my hook, and tossed in a worm.

It took a while to figure out where the eddies and current would take my line, but eventually I figured out the spot I was in and started getting some bites.  My first hook up was with a yellow bass. He wasn't quite the water donkey (i.e., keeper) that I was looking for, but he was fun to catch!

The panfish were next.  I reeled in a tiny sunfish and a micro-crappie.  #MultiSpeciesDay

At this point, my hall pass away from home was expiring, and too many people were showing up at the spillway for my liking anyway.  I packed it up, headed for my car, and decided that I'd get back to the water soon.  Maybe I'll catch a water donkey next time.

Back in the saddle

I still had some worms left from my April 22 water donkey adventure - and my wife hates having worms in the fridge - so I decided to head back to the spillway two days later.  There was a fly fisherman working the spot that I was in last time, so I set up shop next to some flooded stairs hoping that a few fish would be hanging out around there.  Long story short, it wasn't a great place to fish with worms.  The fly fisherman was having some luck, so I decided to try tossing out a lure.  Out of sheer dumb luck, I managed to land a blue gill and another yellow bass (#MultiSpeciesDay).

Obviously, none of these little guys were water donkeys, but that's what the fly fisherman was reeling in.  He caught a 5.5 lb largemouth bass and a good-sized wiper.  Either fish would have been a trophy for me and ended up in my belly, but he was strictly a catch and release kinda guy though.

He was also friendly, and we got to talking, which wasn't easy next to the roar of the spillway and our physical separation due to social distancing.  He recommended bottom-fishing for the wipers, using anything that looked like a shad.  I might just give that a try next time...