I just caught a true colossus of creeks, sultan of swim, insert third thing here. This was a truly awe-inspiring sized catch – I gasped when I landed this bad boy. It’s pretty rare to catch something with this size, it is truly the biggest* fish I’ve ever caught. Without further ado:
*Okay, so by biggest I mean the biggest fish I’ve caught in this particular species – yellow perch… which isn’t a particularly big species.
That’s right, I was able to single-handedly reel in the above monster with nary a scare. I had decided to travel a little farther out than usual to a wonderfully scenic spot where the ‘Ozzy (Otselic River) flows into a massive reservoir. It’s not a place I go to regularly but that may have to change for two reasons:
a) I mean, did you see the size of that perch above? Well lets try a different angle:
b) It’s absolutely gorgeous:
Anyways, back to the perch. I don’t talk about these fish very much for a pretty simple reason – I haven’t caught one in over a year! I realize the exclamation point may seem like overkill, but it is kind of bizare to not catch a fish as common as perch for that long. This is the last perch I caught before today:
Nice and cute fish, right? That is a very typical Massachusetts perch. I had never caught one in New York before today, but clearly they get bigger out here. They are basically a mini – walleye. Don’t remember what walleye are? Well your in luck, I caught a baby one right after catching the lunker perch:
Perch and walleye share one particular thing in common (actually, I think they are related so probably more than one), they are known as some of the finest freshwater eating out there. The big difference is the amount of meat, most of the perch I catch just aren’t big enough to be worth cooking, so I was very excited to catch one this big. I figured it’d be just enough for a single meal, whereas a decent sized walleye is easily enough for two. So what should you do with a couple of small perch fillets at your disposal?
Fried fish tacos! This is a great option when you don’t have a ton of meat for a straight fish and chips approach. Usually, I love a good beer batter approach and deep frying my fillets – it literally never disappoints. But if you’re dealing with thinner fillets and whatnot, that’s a bit overkill.
Tacos let you dress the fish up and add some things without detracting from the quality of the meat. This is the perfect time to pan fry in butter (or just regular oil). The process is easy. Take a dry fillet, cover it in corn starch or flour (flour is more common, but I think corn starch is better for any frying purposes), dip it into an egg wash (literally just scramble an egg), then cover it in those extremely old bread crumbs you probably have hanging around your cupboards. Here’s a visual overview of the process, including my own personal sous chef helping me out:
Fish is really quick to cook, so it doesn’t really take more than a few minutes. I prefer them nice and deep golden brown. This was my first time using butter as the oil and not vegetable/canola, to be honest I think it was a little too rich – still delicious but I think a blander oil would have been better. Either way, the fillets should look like this:
After that, fish tacos are whatever you want them to be. I decided to make a tangy tarter sauce – just a combination of mayo, relish, lemon juice/zest, and some buffalo sauce for the heat. Yep, that is an interesting combination, but I really like it. After that, I just added some shredded cheese and fresh cilantro and put it on a toasted tortilla wrap:
It was, of course, delicious. Ideally there’d be a little more meat, but it fried up well and was nice and flaky. I definitely prefer the beer batter but the bread crumb route was great given what I was working with. Overall a great use of a really nice fish. Alas, I have yet to accomplish some of the actual goals I’m working towards, but given these initial results I know they’ll happen sooner rather than later. All I gotta do is…
Cast and Pray,
Jon (Bonus pic of Bubz begging for food one inch from my face below)
Nice catch! That really is a big boy with a big ol’ belly. Food looked tasty too. Perch are an underrated fish in my book. They fight decently, come in all shapes, sizes, and colors and taste good to boot.