Bait fish For Breakfast
 

BECAUSE of this THREAD (and some google research, and my mother in laws father's fishing for smelt to eat), I ate the bait for breakfast THIS morning.

I was out fishing yesterday and caught lots of macks and lots of smelt. There was so much bait fish in the water that the larger fish did not seem hungry.

This morning I went into my lobster bait in the freezer and pulled out 3 smelt that were about 14 hrs old.

When I butterfly filet the bait, I noticed very white meat :D

WOW, super good eats, should have gone for more

and I thought smelt were good for nothing but cut bait...bravo....nuther
good idea, nice presentation:reel:

Fast way to make Smelt (which i love to eat). Clean and gut it deep fry it with some garlic. For the side fries and lots more garlic and a nice big tomato sliced with salt and peper.
Or you can bake them, brush olive oil and spices all over inside and out. put a thin sliced black olive on top of each.
I just made myself very hungry.

The mans legit...And so is his brother Albert. Some of the best chefs in the world have worked for him...
A meal there will run you around $600 US dollars.....per person and take a year to get into.... When they were open.... Now it's a school for modern cooking. Top restaurant in the world for along time along with The Fat Duck in England and the newcomer Noma in Denmark.

Food 4 thought ....?

Did you scale them? How easy are they to butterfly?

I left the scales on, and what happened is when I cleaned and beheaded them, I noticed a large backbone as the bait was quite large. I grabbed the backbone at the head end and pulled it and it came out nicely ending in a butterfly. Did the same for the other two and worked just as good. Leaves a few small bones you can eat or discard.

Smelt and Grunions are essentially the same.

I go through hundreds of them during grunion run season.

Easiest way to prepare is to scale, salt, dust in flour, and deep fry. Then just eat around the bones and gut.

No need to gut them or fillet them. Easy to prepare when you have a bucket of hundreds at a time.

People have been eating them this way forever. Not so popular now, but in the 70s and 80s it was a very popular thing to do. Goes great with beer.

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Yea, spanish is a bit hard to debone.

The "correct" way to do it is to fillet, peel off the skin by hand, cut out the rib bones, then pluck each of the small bones out using a tweezer. At least that is how the restaurants do it. This way, you end up with a beautiful boneless fillet which you can cut into pieces.

Too much work for the home cook.

What I do is fillet the two sides, skin using fillet knife, cut out the rib bones, Then cut out the center strip holding the blood line and small bones. So I don't need to pluck individual bones.

Once you have the meat de-boned, put some grated ginger and chopped scallons on top. Eat with soy sauce (no wasabi).

Easy meal for the skunked fisherman.

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no offense but why would you eat bait!

Two reasons,

lack of catching anything larger that day except macs

and because they taste extremely delicious.

I am actually craving more right now as I only had one and my wife and her mother each had one. My wife does not really like fish and she ate the whole thing ;)

I think they are tasty.

Maybe not for everyone. But I like to switch up my meals a little sometimes. I still got yellowtails, white seabass, sheephead, and rockfish in the freezer, but I'll still eat bait once in a while. Taste-wise, I like spanish macks more than any of them.

I haven't had a chance to get out in a while; but I am guessing from the sounds of this thread that perhaps fishing is slow these days?

"Ahh hell, I guess we can just eat the bait."

I can't wait to see how Yani serves up the bottom of the food chain. I have heard from lots of folks that spanish mas taste great. I have yet to try one, it seems like a lot of work for such a little bit of meat. Then again, I eat trout, and one could say the same for them. Thanks all, you have opened my mind.

I'm aware he is legit, however there is no way he can have a legitimate title as "the best chef in the world" it's an impossibility. It's like saying I'm the best artist in the world, food is an art, it's open to interpretation...you simply cannot have a "best". I've spent 600.00 on a meal in San Diego, was the chef the best in the world too?


I'm assuming you are/were also a chef(as was I, BA in culinary arts from CSCA le Cordon bleu) so you have to know what I'm talking about.

You should try hooping for lobsters. :D

Agree......:sifone:

my cuz was eatin smelt for a while, then he started finding parasites in the meat. mabe take a good look when you clean um. :cheers1:

Just ate a greenie! Didn't filet as well as a I hoped because it was still a little frozen inside.

It was actually pretty good. Some olive oil, lemon pepper and fresh basil and it was actually quite yummy! Definitely saving bait from now on lol.

Whether you eat macs or sardines is strictly cultural.

It has absolutely nothing to do with taste.

We have been "trained" that it is a bait fish, many places think otherwise.

We don't eat horse meat in the U.S. because we were "trained". If you ever had smoked horse sausage links, to die for.

Beef is cool, right? Not to the 930 billion Indians.

So, keep your mind open.


Carp, now that is some good eats!:D

[QUOTE=StinkyMatt;97716]
If you ever had smoked horse sausage links, to die for.
So, keep your mind open.

Ummm ...... had some variations of horse in Italy, but wish i had some of those.....

Stinky Matt..... your aint so stinky .....

But thats right I almost forgot..... your part of the elite group now right....:D

The tongue is excellent when eaten raw. Had them in Japan.