Hit Lake Michigan on weds. Caught two rainbows. Too hot and no breeze. 5 miles out in 120-200'. Surface temp of the water was 74 degrees. That's unheard of in the big pond.
Are those hybrids? Nice fish. I troll for them here in December
Nice. We kill the stripers and hybrids in mid-Ga on Lake Juliette (Ga Power lake). 10-30lb stripers can be had all day long trolling in the right areas, right deep depths, at the right times. The bigguns are like fighting and pulling up a trolling motor battery, with fins and gills. When they get to schooling and running the shad into the shallower 6-12ft of water, it's a every cast slaughter with Rapalas and Bang-o-lures. Fun fishin'.
15 daily in Ga...depending on the lake/waterway, there are different length restrictions based on where you're fishing.
As far as cooking stripers...prep of the fish is number one. When you fillet them like a typical fish, you've gotta cut out the red meat that runs along the fishes lateral line. It's real oily and strong fishy tasting if you don't. It's mostly blood vessel and connective tissue and needs to be cut out with a fillet knife. Some folks will leave the red meat along the lateral line, soak the fillet pieces in milk for a few hours before breading and hitting the fish fryer. Fried is best to me, but they can be grilled, baked/broiled, blackened with seasoning in a cast iron skillet is damn good. Another thing not to forget when cleaning stripers...always take a fillet knife and remove the big plug of 'cheek' meat on either top of the head, as well as the 'collar meat' (triangles of meat behind the gills). On big stripers, these areas of solid meat are bigger than large sea scallops at times, and if you like sea scallops, these plugs of meat on the grill basted down with melted butter/lemon/sea salt are every bit as good, if not better. Can even wrap a piece of bacon around them...damn fine eats on the grill.
Yes, 15 a day limit/per person. You better have some big coolers in the boat if they're two or three of ya fishing for them. The boat live wells don't cut it at all.
You're welcome...enjoy the good eats.
There ya go...salmon?
Older, retired Boeing engineer brother of mine used to have to go to Tacoma/Seattle quite a bit. He would send back to Ga lbs and lbs of salmon on dry ice that we'd grill, send back lbs of the finest smoked salmon ya ever had as well. Some of the finest grilled salmon we ever had. And the smoked, best stuff on the planet. Our mother used to take a few lbs of the smoked and make it into a smoked salmon dip...every sleeve of crackers, whether Ritz, Wheat Thins, regular ol' saltine, plus all the boxes of fancy crackers, would disappear in a days' time.
