Where There’s a Will, There’s a Walleye

Despite the weather turning around (finally), fishing in Mid April and early May  can be a tad frustrating.  Most of the fish I like targeting (i.e., eating), are off limits.  So what’s a man  to do?  Catch the good fish anyways! And also maybe double check fishing season dates too…

Well, actually I first decided to go for catfish, hoping I could make a nice Sunday meal out of it.  The problem is I can’t catch a baitfish to save my life.  All I freaking need is one small fish I can “process” into bait and I’ll be catching monster catfish left and right.  Yet I’m completely inept.  I most recently went to this wonderful tributary of the Susky called the Nanni’ to see if I could catch just one bluegill:

Looks pretty ideal right?  Well it’s not.  Oh don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of fish in there.  You can literally see them, you just can’t catch them!

I’m extrapolating my issues of not catching extremely easy-to-catch fish to virtually all of mankind due to a refusal to admit I somehow erred or don’t know enough.

Despite all this, I still gave catfishing my best effort with some craptastic bait I bought at a local sporting goods store.  It 100% doesn’t work but does juuuust enough to the point I can delude myself into thinking it’ll work – which is basically 90% of fishing anyways.  Nevertheless, it became very apparent I was not going to be catching any kitty kats at the local hotspot I was at.  I decided to keep the bait in the water and cast with my lighter rod for a bass hopefully whilst pondering why bad things happen to good people:

And then all of the sudden, WHAM! Or maybe WHAMMY! Or whatever onomatopoeia fits your personal fishing fantasy, I won’t judge (I prefer a classic ska-doosh).  Point being, I had a bite and it was a big one! Not catfish big, mind you, but still pretty good!  As I started wrasslin’ with the beast it started to bust out some familiar maneuvers and I had guessed what it was before landing it.  A Walleye!  However, this sucker was an absolute LUNKER (all absolute statements are relative in this blog):

If you don’t remember or haven’t read my previous blogs, Walleye have been quite the challenge for me.  It took about 4 months of specifically targeting them before I was actually able to catch my first one (and about a year later for my second one, YEESH).  So at first I was super pumped, I caught the biggest Walleye ever.  But then I got a little ticked off because I remembered Walleye weren’t in season.  I got mad, real mad:

Given Walleye are absolutely delicious (and also given I realized I did not remember to get anything for dinner), I decided to quickly google the fishing seasons in NY to make sure I wasn’t misremembering – I typically am.  Great news! In classic fashion, I had assumed the Walleye season was the same as last year, but it actually changed and opened up this very day!

I know this sounds like bs but it really was a mix up. NY state used to have floating fishing season dates so they’d change every year. This year is the first year they changed to a hard date of May 1st where you can keep Walleye, Pike, and Muskellunge. May 1st was this past Sunday, the day I go fishing.

I went from mad to glad!

We eatin’ fam!  Eating what you may ask? Or in what form to put it more accurately?  Well, normally I’m all for just frying Wallies, they are the best freshwater eating bar none.  But I’ve decided to mess around with a few different recipes this season.  I decided to go with Walleye fish cakes!

The general process was to bake the fillets a bit and then break it into chunks.  Then you simply mix in bread/cracker crumbs, some olive oil, any seasonings you want (I heavily featured Old Bay), and if you want to make big ones like I did you probably need at least one egg for a binder.  After that, I suggest using a neutral oil and making it medium-high hot on a pan.  Form the mixture into a ball and then flatten it out.  Odds are it won’t be super strong but that’s fine, the frying will take care of the rest.  Also a homemade tartar sauce is a must.  Mayo (not miracle whip), relish, lemon zest/juice, and a new feature for me is freshly chopped dill, it made a huge difference!

The final product was served with mac and cheese and on a bed of baby spinach leaves.  Voila:

Not bad, right?  In my opinion nothing beats freshly fried fish, but this was a nice change of pace (and probably a tad healthier).  I mostly used Old Bay seasoning to pretend I was some fancy person in Maryland eating a crab cake, but I think maybe even just straight garlic would have been better.  All in all, it worked out quite nicely.

This is one of those rare times where just by going out there and giving it a try fishing pays off in unexpected ways! As always, the first step is too…

Cast and pray,

Jon (obligatory Bubz photo below)