Fish Cakes- Bake or Fry

To say the least, this past week or two have changed a lot of habits for people in Iowa.  The Corona-Virus has hit and is rapidly spreading, causing Iowans to stay home to slow the spread of the virus.  To no surprise people are making/cooking more of their own food, thus the purpose of this update on my blog.  In the past ten days or so I have been asked by three different friends about the fish cakes recipe I had published a few years ago.  I decided to do another post about this recipe that was originally found in The Iowa Sportsman Magazine.  Each month they highlight wild game recipes, each that I have tried have been great, just another reason to subscribe to the only made for Iowa outdoors magazine.

I have updated a few things that made these cakes even easier to cook, including a baked and fried version.

The recipe calls for bluegills, but I have substituted Yellow Bass in, and they are awesome as well.

The Iowa Sportsman Magazine Recipe

INGREDIENTS:
12 Bluegills/Yellow Bass- filleted 
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp Onion Powder
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Paprika
1 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1 Egg- separate yolk from white
2/3 cup Milk
1 Tbsp butter, melted
Lemon or Tarter Sauce to flavor


A few notes about the process; I just placed the 24 fillets in a casserole dish after spraying with PAM and baked for about 25 minutes (these can also be baked in a toaster oven).  Flaking them is as simple as taking a fork and stirring the baked fillets into small pieces.  Try to drain or soak up unnecessary water from the fillets before you put them into the ingredient mixture.  Having the burner set a little above "medium" seemed to fry them the best on the stove top.  Make sure and flatten the cakes so the middle cooks thoroughly.  Not much oil is need in the fry pan.  This made 7 cakes like you see in the picture, large enough for a couple really hungry people or 3 if there are other items to eat.

BAKED VERSION: spread cakes thin and place in an over/toaster oven for about 25 minutes on 350 degrees.  This is a healthier choice without the added oil needed in the frying process.
I hope you enjoy this recipe from "The Iowa Sportsman Magazine".

The Last Ice Day

The "Crew" with one last pile of fish for the year.

Yesterday marked the last day on the ice for me this season.  What I thought was going to be a long ice season, maybe creeping into the last week of March was taken care of by several 50+ degree days, high winds and nighttime temperatures that were well above freezing throughout Iowa.  It had to end sometime, and I am not one to chase ice to the northern states, it is time for the boats to come out.
The last remaining ice happened to be on Clear Lake this year.  A lake that had a rough season, with many smaller perch being caught and the Yellow Bass that were spread out and not schooled as they once were in past years.  The yellow bass are typically the calling for anglers to visit the lake, but this was only my second time there this year, the other being the YBB ice fishing event.  It was the only chance to hit the ice one more time and I was looking forward to it all week long.
A few friends made the trip there on Saturday, and the bite was awesome for them in the big lake.  My crew and I decided to try the big lake for ourselves on Sunday and it did not disappoint.  The ice had definitely seen better days, but at no time did I feel uncomfortable about the situation.  The top layer of ice was very strong and we enjoyed the day hopping around the big lake chasing down the yellows.  Fishing for yellow bass is an exciting species to ice fish.  You have to be mobile, and with this, packing light helps you achieve that.  Most days, the more you move the more fish you will catch.  They are very nomadic fish, and anglers that want a bucket full of them have to be mobile as well.  A small sled with a bucket, K-Drill, Vexilar FLX-28, Dead Meat Rod with a Quantum Drive Reel and a small box of jigs and spoons was all that made the trip.  This keeps fishing simple, and keeps the angler on the move.  Everything about today was the hunt, and the lighter you pack the more you will hunt.  We landed on two different large, hungry schools this day.  When the fish are below you swarming, it is so important to keep them fired up.  Having a reel with a smooth drag and large spool to drop back down is key, the Quantum Drive in the size 10 model is perfect.  Another tool, or spoon I have come accustomed to using on Yellow Bass is the Reins Tungsten spoon.  I have no doubt that the tools I choose on the ice help me to have successful days.

Reins Palpuntin Spoon, made of
tungsten to get back down
to the schooling fish.

It was an awesome day of catching fish, mostly on a spoon as the schools of large fish were eating.  Everyone caught plenty to take a bucket of fish home to eat, which by the way was about 50 per five-gallon bucket.  The meat on these big yellows are fantastic, especially when you find the larger sized schools.  I have caught a lot of yellows out of the Clear Lake in the past decade or so, but I do not recall a day when I/the group had caught so many fish over ten inches. Typically I do not measure yellow bass, but the day after cleaning session was different this time.  Due to "The Virus" my kids were helpers as I cleaned the fish.  They used a Frabill E-Z Crappie Checker measuring tool to help research the Clear Lake population.  This tool, if you have never tried one is a fool-proof way to measure fish quickly and safely.  Of the 50 fish I had in the bucket, 42 of them were 10-inches or larger.  An amazing year-class of fish.  I did have my eyes set on one particular Yellow Bass I caught this day, I quickly measured it while on the ice at just over 12 inches but wanted a more accurate measurement.  After a day sitting in the bucket it still measured right at 12 inches, no doubt my largest Yellow Bass ever.  Needless to say, it was a great way to end the year!

Deep Water Ice

Today was the day that another check mark was made on my to-do list this winter.  I had not fished through the ice on Brushy Creek for about five years.  In the past the Team Extreme Ice Tournament Trail visited this lake each year, so I got used to fishing it a few weeks each ice season.  I had good memories of the lake, and the endless possibilities that it holds.  Popular ice fishing species in this lake include bluegills, crappies, perch and walleyes.
This lake stays under the radar as a top lake in Iowa to ice fish.  It holds nice sized fish for the all the species I listed, but they don't come easy.  This lake is full, and I mean FULL of structure.  Trees all over the lake, rock piles, points, creek channels, long and deep coves as well as a huge main lake area.  It was quite overwhelming when I began to ice fish, even though I had a good understanding of the lake from bass fishing.  It is a large lake for Iowan's standards, and then all the structure! 
Myself and three friends took the trip west to see how the lake was doing after a half of decade.  I remember the lake having some very nice crappie, decent bluegills and always heard of nice walleyes being caught too, although I had never.  The lake did not disappoint on this day, and it was a good reunion.  The four of us found a really nice little school of bluegills on a main lake point, several different schools of perch, topping out about ten inches, and we followed a school of crappie around from most of the afternoon.  Catching those suspended crappies on the Vexilar FLX28 is quite a treat.  It truly is like a video game!  It was a great day of getting some fish for a meal and practicing catch and release.  The quality of bluegills, in the one school anyway were very nice, nothing like I had experienced in year past.  The crappies that we found in about forty feet of water were not the great quality that I remember, but were good keepers.  Having a smooth reel like the Quantum Drive made getting up and down to the deep crappies an easy task.  I relied heavy on the smooth drag system to bring the fish up slowly, which was necessary for keeping them alive to release.  The larger perch were a nice surprise that added to our cleaning tables. 
I doubt that I will get back to the lake this winter, but I think we will making that trip once again next season.

A nice mess of keepers for the four of us to share