Quote:
Originally Posted by SNAPFisher
Hey Marty, I agree on both. Pinks are my 2nd favorite for flavor after chinook. I've had heard so much about sockeye being the tops with lots of fat but I've tried a decent amount, all from rivers but fresh and silver, and have not been impressed. And yes, river fishing sockeye is such fun on an 8 wt. I used a 9 foot 10 wt and that was nothing but awesome as well.
Brandon, nice catch there 
If you don't mind, could you post back on how they tasted and what you thought? |
Salmon fact... if you didn't enjoy salmon of any type, you forgot the bowl of hot salted dunking butter!!! Now the best of salmon, those with a good heavy dose of salmon oil don't need much, but anything lean and/or overlooked? Bring in the butter.
One can get hungry eating dungeness and snow crab! But if you eat up some salmon just like you eat crab... Well just plain old yum! And you actually get full!
Yup, even good ole chum! Way better than eating all this rough fish from the southern prairie with its hot algae water. No don't eat the rotten ones that have been laying in the river for two weeks, but def do save the fresh chum that are packing the sea lice. Sea lice mean the fish are ocean fresh, even if they are coloured up and not brite silver. Again, the nice 20 lb+ size are the ones packing the oil. You don't have to smoke chum to eat them, but if you eat any salmon hot out of the smoker?? Oh my!
My most favourite sockeye are the big ones. The bigger they are the more oil they are packing, the merrier! Yum! Beater sockeye? Like as in little bitty beater size. Lean but the lethal dose of butter fixes all. Yup visit a Hutterite colony and get to know the milk guy who controls the butter freezer!
Best part of the fish tho is the bellies, causes your fish to be succulent during cooking. I'm very unhappy when I see the processors trimming the bellies off my fish and hucking them in their ($$$$$$) oil recovery bucket.
Now the bad part of the belly, it is the first part of the fillet to start tasting old in the freezer, but leave mine on please. If a little discoloured when I cook, then I'll do the trim.
And then them goofy pinks! Some of the best salmon I have eaten were in fact pinks! But they were mostly taken in salt water and cut and flash frozen very shortly after killing. Like let's kill a few pinks in the last hour of the trip to top up our quota and they get filleted in an hour or two and flash froze immediately. They can't sit in a cooler for a day and might as well have a heavy dose of ice. Any pink that's been in the river any length of time? Yuck. Same goes for pinks laying in the cooler for a day plus before dealing with them, maybe not yuck, still much better than algae fish!
Ok, that's the end of my salmon eating gluttonry rant.