From Stream To Table
One of the best things you can put in your body, if your not a vegetarian, is wild game or wild fish. If you eat meat, there is no way to achieve a more curtly free burger or fillet of fish. They are packed full of nutrients and were never subjected to the cruel treatments of factory farming, pumped full of antibiotics, or forced to live in their own waste. Fish Farms Destroy whatever water system they are put in with massive amounts of fish waste, food, and antibiotics that are put in the water to keep the fish alive in such tight conditions that they never evolved to live in.
When eating wild game or fish, there is no pollution, not cruelty, and some absolutely delicious food that come from the final product. In my opinion, trout are one of the best freshwater fish to eat, right behind salmon.
The first step in eating a fish is to clean it. The way you do that depends on how you want to cook it, but for a trout, the easiest way is just to gut it. I hardly bother with filleting a trout because, in my opinion, it is more of a hassle than what it is worth. Cleaning a trout is actually really easy and all you need is a sharp knife. In this article they recommend doing it at the river or stream you’re at, don’t do that if you’re fishing in Pennsylvania, its actually illegal and you will get a fine if a fish and game warden catches you. Another key is keeping the fish alive while you continue fishing. I do this by putting them on a stringer and let them swim in the water while I catch my limit or however many I plan on eating. Allowing the fish to stay alive and swim around and stay in the cool. water helps keep the meat fresher and the
trout will taste better as a result. I don’t do this often, as I am more a a catch and release type of fisherman, but every now and then I will keep a few for dinner.
Salmon are a whole different animal, and I would assume most people have at least tried it in a restaurant. when cleaning a salmon, you need to Fillet it. For this you will need a fillet knife. Fillet knives are usually longer, thin and flexible, and need to be kept very sharp. This flexibility allows the knife to bend so it can slide along the back bone of the fish and give you a cleaner cut. There are so many ways to cook salmon that I won’t even get started. You can eat it raw, you can fry it, you can bake it, you can do almost anything with it, and it will be delicious.
There is nothing like sitting down at the table or around the campfire and eating a fish you caught yourself. You get to tell everyone about the fight it put up, where you were and why you chose to use the kind of bait you did. The hardest part of catching and eating your own fish is explaining how the fish had grown at least three inches since it bit your bait to the time you got it to your truck and took a picture. All in all, there is no way to achieve a more natural connection to your food than harvesting it yourself. You know exactly what kind of conditions that fish was living in, how it was treated once it was caught, the way it was cleaned, and how it was prepared. You don’t get that from factory farmed fish that destroy the environment.
I feel like catching your own food would make it taste better. Not only is it fresher and unharmed by farming practices like the use of antibiotics, it also has the appeal of being the product of a day’s work. While I’ve never caught a fish/hunted, even just picking your own fruit can bring about a feeling of accomplishment that makes your meal that much more delicious. This feeling is probably magnified when the process of obtaining the food actually takes skill!