Ribbon Chips/Fries - The Ultimate Fish Fry Appetizer

The best shore lunch or fish fry requires great fish, but the sides are equally as important. Try some buffalo bleu cheese ribbon cut fries/chips for your ne...

I’ve spent my fair share of time in fish camps, lake-shore restaurants, and on remote island shore lunches across the US and Canada. No matter how many times I have fresh fish in the outdoors, I can’t get over how great the experience is. Truth be told however, not all fish-fry’s are created equal, and from what I’ve seen, the best of the best often include some incredible sides.

Potatoes are a staple in any good shore-lunch, and you’ve got the oil going for fish so you might as well make use of it. Here’s a great way to make ribbon-cut fries/chips with this handy vegetable slicing tool . The best part is that you can really customize this one to your liking by adding buffalo/bleu cheese, BBQ seasoning, loaded baked potato toppings, and even beer cheese soup!

I got the idea for this one when headed to the Minnesota State Fair and seeing all of the ribbon cut fries on a stick, dressed with cheese. From there, a trip to JL Beers in Fargo further stoked interest, and I knew I just needed to find a good ribbon slicer for the outdoors. I’ve been doing this now for over a decade, and these are a request from friends and family anytime we cook fish outside.

Spring Inventory and Sales Season

Don’t forget to go through your raingear. It’s an item we take for granted until we really need it!

For most anglers, this time of year represents a relative dead-zone between their ice and open-water exploits.  Sure, there’s late ice to be found in certain portions of the state, as are open-water opportunities, especially if you live near any of the walleye-producing border water rivers.  For many of us, a long ice season dulls the ambition for anything that’s not 60 degrees and sunny.  Given the general lull in fishing activity at the moment, now is a great time to make the upcoming open water season even better.

While “inventory” sure doesn’t sound like fun, if you’re a fan of garage or shop-time, it’s really not that bad.  Couple that with the fact that the sooner you get to it, the more excited you are for fishing and it’s something I actually look forward to every year.  It’s kind of like putting a stake in the ground and saying that we’re past this whole ice thing, on to bigger and better things.

Take pictures of your tackle, then look online to see what items could use replacing. Keep organized lists ready for spring sales, so you can replace them easily and on the cheap.

From a preparedness standpoint, you’re ahead of the game too.  One of the biggest chores I have each season, is thinking about the trips I know I’ll do, and how I’ll likely be fishing.  That triggers a number of lists, and if you’ve read anything I’ve ever done, you know I’m a big fan of them.  I’ve been using Google Keep, an app that allows you to make quick lists that are easily accessible, searchable, and send-able that live on your mobile phone.  Whether you’re using Keep or any number of list apps that are everywhere these days, the point is that it’s a choice move headed into the open water season.  I can easily make note of jig colors I’m low on, line types and poundages that I’ve used up, along with bigger ticket purchases that may take even more planning. 

I’ve found that early bird gets the worm in terms of both availability and price.  It’s nice to shop early for what you need, or potentially be picky and wait for the right sale to arrive.  As a general rule, if you don’t know what you need it’s tough to replace it.  So often we buy extras of what we don’t need, and never enough of what we do.  Years of finding too many black jigs in half ounce that I don’t need, while never enough of the eighth-ouncers in chartreuse that I do has prompted me to be pretty meticulous when it comes to tracking what I have and don’t. 

Of course, there’s always the new gear that catches our eye at spring sales and advertisements.  I’ve found that I can make better decisions on the new gear by double checking my old stuff.  I’m more honest with myself after I’ve just been through it and understand what lifespan it may have left.  New gear is great fun, but it’s even better when it’s serving an actual need or replacing something that’s on its last leg.  I hate getting rid of perfectly functional items.

This goes for apparel too, as it’s nice to have some dedicated fishing clothes. This time of year, many of those items go on sale, so it’s great to stock up when prices are good. Raingear falls in that category, as I’m usually wearing bibs whether it’s raining or not. They’re my fishing bibs that keep me dry and warm during early season trips, and clean or not as fishy when I’m done for the day. Early season warmer varieties and medium weight bib and jacket combinations are nice now, and the ultra-lightweight stuff is perfect in hot summer sun. If you had to pick one, I’d consider the medium weight gear for most of the season, and some UPF and sunblock style shirts for summer. You’ll check a few boxes at once, and not necessarily have to buy two sets of raingear unless you need them for both sets of conditions. I have a few pairs on-hand for kids, friends, and the off chance I tear or rip them.

Getting your boat ready includes organizing everything from the big stuff to the smallest of items. If you wear an inflatable PFD, it’s a good time to check and re-arm them.

As part of the cleanup and organization process, it’s really nice to lay-out your boat.  Figure out ahead of season where you’ll be putting things so in-season you’ll never have to go hunting for them. That goes for rods, life jackets, and all the way down to tiny items like forceps and line.  This tip, and many other organizational ones have come from decades of hanging out with guides and serious anglers that literally stake their reputation on it.  Any guide worth their salt has a place for everything, fully functional gear that’s been gone through recently, and almost always backups for their backups. 

They earn a living on never being caught flat-footed, so staying organized is just part of their business.  Ultimately, I’ve learned it improves your fishing in a strange way.  Not only are you more efficient on the water, but minor mishaps, unforeseen circumstances, and problems are easily addressed with the additional headlamps, tow-ropes, extra pliers, or any number of items you don’t need until you need.  They cover more water more quickly, and can spend more time focusing on boat control than where the net ended up.  All of it equals better fishing overall, so take the time to setup your boat well in advance of when you’ll actually use it. 

Don’t overlook your fishing rods, and consider a specialty stick for any application that involves “light-biters.”

Rod-checks are part of the equation, both from the perspective of general maintenance, but also to replace broken or needed items. Again, with spring sales, it’s a good time to invest in some technology that can make you a better angler. Not all techniques lend themselves to the highest end equipment, but anything requiring extreme feel or detection of subtle bites can really benefit from a specialized stick. Jig-fishing for any species is in the mix, as is most of the live-bait walleye applications. Don’t forget about panfish either, as especially during this time of year, detecting light bites can really make or break the day.

Fresh line is probably the last of my tasks, which involves going through rods and reels first.  I figure out how much I need, in what pound test, and how I’ll be using it.  That last part helps determine the types of line I’ll need.  From leadcore and braid, to mono and fluoro, I want to have everything fresh spooled where possible.  It’s rather cheap insurance, especially if you’re buying in bulk spools, and I also want to have a little extra to respool throughout the season.  Many of the braids will be fine for several years, whereas mono I like changing annually at least. 

It’s up to you to keep your gear in great shape, and have what you need as soon as you can prior to the open water season.  Everytime I forget something before a trip, or find an item I missed or forgot to replace, I get a pit in my stomach making a late-night stop just hoping they’ll have the specific item I need.  Safe yourself the hassle, get your gear in advance, and hit the water with rods rigged and the confidence to know that even though there’s lots of angling circumstances you can’t control, the ones you can are locked-down. 

Right now there’s a number of sales going on, and spring can be a great time to re-stock after last season cleaned you out. Here’s a list of them:

• Northland Tackle - 20% OFF Site-wide

• Striker Brands - Raingear and apparel 20% OFF with free shipping

• St. Croix Rods - Rolling Promos through April

Should I Buy A Pellet Grill?

From multiple cooking styles and different food types, to various temps and techniques, pellet grills are here to stay.

Pictured:

Traeger 885 Ironwood

Long-handled Tongs

Pellet grills have gone mainstream; from something that sounded experimental only a few years ago, to a fully featured, well-seasoned backbone of the BBQ grill market.  They’ve been around for decades, though their popularity is not really anything I saw coming, or even something I fully supported.  I’m kind of a traditionalist when it comes to cooking, at least when I have the time to be.  Yet at the same time, if it produces good food, especially with less input or fuss, I’m all about it.  The same has held true for sous vide cooking or even newer techniques like reverse searing.  If we can do it better, easier, faster, or all of the above, without sacrificing taste, or even improving it, why not?

Being an avid hunter and angler, I have ample opportunity and interest in all forms of cooking.  From smoked turkey, to seared venison chops, and slow-roasting cedar-planked salmon, I want a grill to do it all.  That comes from someone who owns or has owned a laundry list of charcoal and gas grills, vertical propane smokers, chimney-style bullet electric and charcoal smokers, and even a Kamado style cooker. 

Extra room wasa big selling point for my Traeger 885 Ironwood - and it’s not even pictured with the extra rack that would hold a few more racks of ribs.

I’ve always been in search of versatility in terms of techniques and temperatures, no matter the fuel source, and no matter what I’ve tried, it seems like most versions of grills tend to do one or two things quite well, while being woefully inadequate in other areas.  For example, I really fell in love with a cheapie vertical cabinet-style smoker I had a few years ago.  It was propane, had tons of control, and it produced some really great results.  Ultimately, it lasted only two seasons before rusting out at the bottom, and could not be used for anything other than smoking really. 

Surely a Kamado style cooker would produce better results, so I dropped nearly $2k for the biggest and baddest, complete with a wooden roller cabinet to support its massive weight.  I treated that wood with the most expensive stain and poly combination I could find, covered it religiously, and still found a way to rot out the cabinet, and grow fuzz on the inside of the grill itself.  If it rains where you live, or worse, snows, then gets hot in the summer, a Kamado style grill might not be for you.  It seared well, smoked fairly well, and did fine in terms of roasting, but without a temp/fan controller, really required some babying.  Building and maintaining fires in them was a laborious process, and not to mention messy.  I’m all for that style of cooking, when I have the time, but woefully disdain it when I do not.

Fish can be a tough grill chore if heating isn’t consistent or runs too hot.

It was about that time, I hired someone to build a new table for my Kamado, and got myself a pellet grill – the Traeger Ironwood 885.  Again, with versatility in mind, I was interested in the size, multiple racks, temperature range, super-smoke mode, and especially, the ease of use.  I’ve got a gas grill too (the deck is getting full), and see my Traeger in a similar light.  Both are easy to use, require similar pre-heat, and are supplied by a readily available fuel source.  Propane is easier to find, but I’ve got Traeger pellets at the local hardware store, big boxes, and outdoors stores too, so it’s a push for where I live.

The similarities stop there, and I’ve grown to really love my pellet grill.  I get a solid “smoky” flavor and low temps when I want it, searing and high temps when I need it, and everything in between when I’m cooking chicken, fish, vegetables, and a host of other items, like desserts.  I can choose from a variety of smoke flavors, simply by adding different pellets, and I can perform more complex cooks, more easily.  For example, if I want to slow smoke ribs, then wrap and crank the heat to push the cook along, then unwrap and sauce at a slightly lower temp, I can do all of the above with the push of a few buttons.   

The Traeger App allows you to search a recipe and enact it on your grill - complete with controls for heat, timing, and meat probe alerts. Best of all, you can monitor your fuel and switch it to “keep warm” so the food fits your schedule.

Better yet, I can do all of that and more from my phone.  These days, I visit the grill to get it going, and come back to it when finished.  Occasionally, I’ll check it out mid-cook for a spray, slather, or sauce, but the onboard temp probe gets put in the meat at the start, and I monitor internal temp from there.  Recipe guides from the control app can be sent straight to the grill, complete with instructions, timing regulation, and alerts on my phone.  While I enjoy some of the tinkering and going off on my own, I realize that most people do not.  They want repeatable results and max ease of use.  I can’t think of an easier way to grill. 

There’s a few drawbacks, like the occasional need to remove ash via shop vac, and maybe some general grate scraping and foil shield replacing.  All of which is as easy as the gas grill maintenance and way easier than any wood or charcoal grill I’ve owned.  Ultra greasy grill-offs should be monitored, as I had one flare up when I didn’t keep the grease drain free from obstruction.  My fault on that one, but lesson learned, and the grill was smart enough to shut itself down after it detected the fire.  Still, I’ve had grease fires on gas grills and wood-fired grills too, so it’s been pretty rock-solid.  I’ve gone through a few bags of pellets, but fuel is fuel – grill, smoke, or roast a lot of food, and you’re going to go through it.  It’s slightly more expensive to fuel than propane, but with a load of flavor, so again, I’m not against paying a bit more for a quality result.

In App controls are reflected on the base unit, so you can monitor from afar or up close.

For that reason and others above, it’s become my go-to for about everything I cook, and I continue to find new ways to incorporate it into everyday cooking.  Grilling used to be for weekends, but I’ve done some really great mid-week meals that don’t heat up the house and are a blast to do.  The more I use it, the better I learn to make use of it for the varied styles and recipes it excels at.  For just about every task, including pizza-making, it does better than the other grills in my stable.

Over the long-haul, I expect it to phase out my other grills for all but a very few specialized tasks.  Even then, knowing what I know now, it would definitely be the one grill to replace them all had I only room for one.  I’m excited to own it for years to come, and look forward to sharing more I learn along the way.

When a Picture is Worth a Thousand Lures

Ever lost a tackle box?  I’m pretty good at it as it turns out.  So are my kids I’ve come to learn, they’ve got too many of my own genes.  I’ve lost them tragically to a canoe capsize, which is a rough story I’d not like to recall.  I’ve lost one to theft, and of course it was a box full of crankbaits.  I’ve left them on the banks of rivers, in buddy’s cars and boats, and even lost them in my own messes.  Those are the worst, when you lose an ice-fishing box in some other coat you rarely wear, only to find it a few years later.  If you’re like me, you know the lump-in-your-throat feeling that comes with not just the initial loss, but the cost and time it takes to reassemble what you own.

So it was this past week when my youngest son was granted my primary open-water panfish box, and lost it.  It was loaded with stuff, which to a casual observer may look to be only a couple bucks, but careful examination and the rising price of tackle meant a few hundred dollars in every kind of panfish rig under the sun.  As you might imagine, reassembly of 30 some years of panfish tackle is like telling a baseball card collector to just go out and replace his coveted McGuire and Griffey Jr. rookie cards.  Some of that stuff they just don’t make these days.

I’m lucky to work in the industry and at times am privy to deals on select tackle and brands, which certainly makes reacquiring tackle easier, but rarely is anyone showered with free goods just for being who they are.  Usually, anything free is really payment for services, or with an expectation of services later.  The same is true for discounts.  Which of course, turns a simple jig into currency; a thought not lost on someone who just misplaced said jigs.     

Life goes on, and crappies and gills still call, so I went about putting that box back together.  Step one was a nearly forgotten photo I’d taken a few years ago.  I’ve been convinced by a buddy or two in the insurance industry to photo catalog everything I own at one point or another.  Sage advice for a number of reasons, and while I was never planning on using those shots, I’m sure glad I had them.  It was pretty easy to see each of the lures, colors, quantity, and other items in the box.  It was even a great way to take inventory on what I “thought” I had vs. what I now feel like I could use some extras of.

These days, it’s easier than ever to catalog your tackle.  Most of us have smart-phones, and whether we know it or not, access to cloud storage.  That could mean Dropbox, Google Drive, or any other number of storage solutions that don’t involve having those photos only on your phone or point-and-shoot.  Those pics are subject to any form of chaos like fire, water, or simple loss as well, so just having them on your phone isn’t the best way to ensure you’ll always have them.   

Start by laying out all of your tackle boxes at once, or in groups, and snap an overhead photo of everything.  Then, get in close for multiple photos of the same box each.  It’s amazing how different angles and shuffling the tackle a bit can reveal some new items previously unseen.  Then, make sure at the end of the session that you move those photos offsite somewhere.  I use Dropbox and with an app on my phone, can easily shift the photos I’ve taken to Dropbox online storage.  It means I can access them from my phone again, but also from any other device should I need to look at them on the fly or when buying more tackle.

Of course if you never lose anything, and can completely rule out fire, water damage, or any other general form of destruction, by all means forgo this step.  I’m not that lucky, and also have a way of putting my stuff in harms way from time to time.  That makes me (and my family) prime candidates for a photo-everything day. 

At this point, I’ve nearly restocked all of the panfish tackle save a few items that have been discontinued or I otherwise haven’t purchased yet.  I put everything in a newer, larger box, and though I dreaded the task, my oldest who has lost his fair share as well did some penance and helped.  We had fun dumping out the tackle here, there, and everywhere, generally playing fishing as we went. 

Fast forward to last night when I received a call.  The old tackle box has been found.  All of which means that this has simply been a training exercise, but it’s good to have that now and again too.  It’s also good to know that it’s worth the time and effort to take a few photos, should (when) this ever happen(s) again.  That and I have at least twice the amount of panfish tackle I’ll need for years to come.   

Spinners for Bluegills?

It’s pretty easy during the dog days of August and even into September, for bluegill and crappie anglers to lull themselves into a rut.  Fishing can be tough during the hot, sunny part of the day, and the productive times are usually limited to early and late.  Admittedly, if I’ve only got an hour or two to fish, I’ll take dawn or dusk as well.  Still, panfish are at their most active during the summer peak and will usually eat better than most species, especially if you put the right baits in the right places.

The fact that the very most active periods are early and late actually presents somewhat of a problem.  If they’re only fired up during low-light, how do you find fish to target during these periods without spending all of your time looking?  For me, it’s with a trolling approach that’s effective during all times of the day, such that you can pinpoint locations of panfish and catch them the way you want to in the early morning or evening.

As a kid running the boat for the first time, I remember being frustrated with the number of crappies we caught pulling spinners on deep weedlines and breaks for walleyes.  Any walleye angler that pulls crawlers will tell you stories about bruiser gills too that inhabit many of the same spaces.  Panfish weren’t “cool,” and bigger, rarer fish like ‘eyes certainly were.  A small spinner rig with crawler pulled off of weed edges can be so deadly for gills, it has given rise to the use of plastics for many walleye folks that are sick of constantly re-rigging bait.  Later in life, I’d be reminded that casting for panfish, with or without live bait, wasn’t always as effective as pulling spinners at a constant pace over variable cover, depths, and locations. 

So it was a few years ago then that I re-discovered, remembered, or otherwise re-visited pulling spinners for crappies and gills on account of a guy we were fishing with who couldn’t keep them off his line.  It’s been a go-to from that day and many others since.  The rig was simple as I remembered it; 1/8 – ¼ oz. bullet-nose sinker above the spinner leader’s swivel, back to a smaller hook or crawler harness tipped with a smaller section of worm or other live bait.  Bigger hooks up to size #6 or #4 mean less hookups and more bait thieves, but overall larger average fish.  Anything size #8 or smaller means more fish hooked up so long as you don’t put too big a chunk of crawler on.  You choose whichever suits you best.

Blade sizes and colors don’t seem to matter as much, provided they aren’t oversized enough to attract more predators and less panfish than they were worth.  Generally speaking, bright colors perform well in murky water and more natural colors do well in clear, but the vibration of a Colorado blade especially I feel does most of the work.  Butterfly spinners have made the technique even more deadly as they offer more flexibility in the speed of presentation.  Slow down to offer nipping fish an easier target, or speed up to clear of weeds or other hazards; it doesn’t matter as they spin at 0.25mph as they do at 2mph plus.  It also means that if you’re snagged or busy unhooking fish, all lines are still performing well for you. 

The presentation part of it is equally simple.  Find a weedline, set your trolling motor anywhere from 0.5mph or higher, and follow a contour.  If the wind is conducive to a good weedline drift, that works well too.  Literally, this technique is all about dragging around until you get bit, and refining from there.  Along the way, depending on the lake, you’ll catch walleyes, bass, and certainly pike mixed in, but the goal is finding crappies and gills to target however you please.  Or to continue to pull spinners on. 

Don’t forget the inside weedline either.  In many systems, especially predator-rich ones, the outside of any weedline can be a scary place.  Cooler water exists for bigger fish that prefer it, and the perfect ambush curtain is drawn to cut down smaller prey species.  That’s why the inside gets little attention, though you’ll have to downsize your weight, and depending on clarity, even consider a panfish planer board.  Without complicating an easy technique too much, I’d likely only consider this in gin-clear water when after trophy crappies.  Gills don’t seem to care as much about you driving over them with the electric motor anyway.

Similarly, don’t avoid the sparse cabbage edges.  These rigs are surprisingly weedless, and both cabbage and coontail can be exactly where you want to target.  It tends to be where you’ll catch the majority of your walleyes mixed in as well.  Along the way, you’ll likely learn a great deal about the layout of weed structure, as well as bottom content changes that are fish magnets during all times of the year.  Don’t hesitate to go heavier on the weight either if you’re trying to focus on the depths during mid-day.  Truth-be-told, many of the crappies I’ve caught over the years this way have been on bottom bouncer rigs tight to bottom.  My guess is that many of these fish were focusing on bloodworms and other invertebrates along the base of the weedline and into the mud. 

Cover some water and take advantage of aggressive, summer spinner-fish.  Find them before evening, and you just might find that the catching is as good during the daytime as it is during primetime.