Bull heads & family fish fry.

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alleyyooper
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Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby alleyyooper » Thu Oct 01, 2020 10:05 am

May1974 I hd bought a new truck in April and already knew the truck a black and chrome beauty was a Piece of . I knew ford was on their way to screwing me over it too. My job was work a week laid off for two weeks and I could not find the funds a decent lawyer wanted. The answer today looking back was stop making the payments and let the bank deal with Ford.

My brother (Rob) and I load our fishing gear boats and motors up and head For Michigans Upper. A lake up there was great fishing tilll about mid July when it become so weed choked you could not run a 65 HP motor all the way across till it got so choked up with weeds you went no place.

How ever spring fishing was great for small mouths bass, northern pike, sun fish, blue gills, crappies, burbot AKA, Lawyer fish, dog fish and other names,
Small mouth season opened in two days so we started out for crappie, sun fish and blue gills.
Wasn’t long and we learned the bull heads were spawning and the bite was on.

Years a go Rob and I learned to keep a couple 5 gallon pails in the boat for our small fish. You have not lived unless you have had a big pike or other like kind of fish attack a stringer of fish hanging off the side of the boat a Alum boat at that.

Soon We had two pails full and it wasn’t even lunch time yet. Run into the camp unload the boat, start cleaning fish the old fashion way we had been taught as pups. Couple guys stop by and see what we are doing and said. You all call us dumb polocks.
Our way included pliers and knife to cut and skin. The way they showed us Dumb swedes was so easy and simple you could skin a 12’ bull head in less than a minute.
This is close to how I was taught by a pair of Posin MI Polocks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnv-yJJDzW8


Rob Being the head camp fire cook Got our big cast iron skillet out of thr truck and poured din about half a gallon of 10 weight cooking oil as I continued to clean fish, throw then in salt water to soak for a bit. Finally the 10 weight is boiling so we fill a shopping (old days) bag with flour salt and pepper and any other seasoning you like. Some times we will add cheese powder like you sprinkle on pop corn.

We had fried fish and ended up with both empty pails and some clean fish raw in the cooler and some cooked in a second cooler.

Over all we had 22 gallons of fish cleaned (NO LIMIT IN MOST WATERS OF MICHIGN ON BULL HEADS.) In styrofoam coolers we brought home and put in the freezer.

Our folks can that evening with the camper. We all fished all day then put A picnic table in the back of my truck with the cap and bug proofed with PIC the coil bug deterrent. Cleaned fish till all clean washed them and put in the coolers on Ice.

The next two days Rob and I would explore other lakes, buy ice and let mom and dad fish.
Rob and I also went searching for Morels little heads and other spring goodies.


Monday morning we head for home, put the fish in a salt bath, for about 12 hours and freeze. Call Dads brothers family and say come up next week end for a fish fry.

Once agin Rob is put to work on the week end with the 10 weight oil brown shopping bag with flour, salt, pepper. My I get the grill with apple wood chunks soaked for 24 hours in water to some you well away from the grills bad side and all bugs left the area. Mom and aunt made side dishes and we started cooking the fish.
We all ate till we had budda bellies all most all fish


Today every one is gone except my self & 2 sisters, 3 of my uncles daughters and a son.

I miss Rob so badly these days. He would be a big help writing the stories.


AL


Your not fully dressed with out a smile.
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greenhorndave
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby greenhorndave » Thu Oct 01, 2020 10:43 am

Gotta admit I’ve never eaten a bullhead. Prefer other stuff, so never tried it. But that’s a slick way to clean them.

How you doing these days?
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alleyyooper
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby alleyyooper » Thu Oct 01, 2020 7:20 pm

Get chemo every Thursday Spend every week end in .
Wife, Kare is about ready to bail on fridays tilll monday when I become human again..


Al
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby matt1336 » Thu Oct 01, 2020 11:42 pm

I loved to eat bullheads when I was a kid. Haven’t had them in a long time. My grandpa would take my brother and I down to a river and we’d catch buckets of them. Grandma would clean them lol. My bro and I were too young to be trusted with sharp stuff and old grandpa had old arthritic farmer hands. Great times!! Al we wish you nothing but the best and a speedy recovery!!!
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby KRONIIK » Fri Oct 02, 2020 1:09 am

I also grew up a farm kid and we fished local ponds for bullheads several times every summer.
I was very good at catching them and had a great deal of summer fun doing it with siblings and cousins.

We sorta made fishing picnics a "celebration trip" after each cutting of hay was put away in the barn.

My family liked eating them but I never really cared for it, that catfish flesh is too soft for my tastes.

Much prefer crappies, bluegills perch and walleyes.

But to each his own.
An old Roman proverb says that it's a waste of time to argue matters of taste!
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UntouchableNess
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby UntouchableNess » Fri Oct 02, 2020 2:39 am

Thanks for sharing the memory, Al. Your story had me looking back.

Probably the best childhood fishing memory for me was a trip to Waterville, Minnesota, bullhead fishing on Lake Tetonka. We went early in the spring when the water is clear and cold, fish flesh is firm. I wore out a Zebco 303 reel cranking in bullheads, the worm rarely hit the bottom of the lake before you had a fish. My Grandpa stopped baiting his hook, he got tired of taking fish off and preferred to sit back and watch me fish. I was having a blast. There was a fish cleaning business that charged 5 cents a fish to clean and freeze. The morning we were to leave, while waiting for them to clean a batch we dropped off, we caught 2 5 gallon buckets full of bullheads that we iced down and headed for Iowa. We gave them to friends when we got home. We caught almost 450 fish in a day and a half of fishing.
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby KRONIIK » Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:05 am

UntouchableNess wrote:Thanks for sharing the memory, Al. Your story had me looking back.

Probably the best childhood fishing memory for me was a trip to Waterville, Minnesota, bullhead fishing on Lake Tetonka. We went early in the spring when the water is clear and cold, fish flesh is firm. I wore out a Zebco 303 reel cranking in bullheads, the worm rarely hit the bottom of the lake before you had a fish. My Grandpa stopped baiting his hook, he got tired of taking fish off and preferred to sit back and watch me fish. I was having a blast. There was a fish cleaning business that charged 5 cents a fish to clean and freeze. The morning we were to leave, while waiting for them to clean a batch we dropped off, we caught 2 5 gallon buckets full of bullheads that we iced down and headed for Iowa. We gave them to friends when we got home. We caught almost 450 fish in a day and a half of fishing.

We never got near that many.
A good afternoon or evening might give us thirty or forty (black) bullheads for each person.
A good-sized one might be about like the one in the vid Al posted.

But on one summer vacation trip we got on a Northern Wisconsin lake that gave up a five gallon bucket of huge brown bullheads with fat yellow bellies.
I'd bet they averaged eighteen inches or more.

That lake has since frozed out and killed all the fish, I've heard.
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UntouchableNess
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby UntouchableNess » Fri Oct 02, 2020 5:41 am

KRONIIK wrote:But on one summer vacation trip we got on a Northern Wisconsin lake that gave up a five gallon bucket of huge brown bullheads with fat yellow bellies.
I'd bet they averaged eighteen inches or more.


Yeah, the ones we caught were big, brown with yellow bellies. For some time, Waterville called itself the bullhead capital. We were up there almost 50 years ago, sure things have probably changed.
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby john1984 » Fri Oct 02, 2020 12:10 pm

Fun times. 8-)
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby KRONIIK » Fri Oct 02, 2020 1:56 pm

john1984 wrote:Fun times. 8-)

It sure was.
Until you ran one of those nasty, venomous, hypodermic dorsal spines up into the web of your hand when unhooking one of them.
Dang that hurt!
Hand would ACHE for hours from the venom, and some of them seemed to have venom that was way more potent than others did.
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby Sailfish_WC » Sat Oct 03, 2020 5:11 am

It seemed I couldn’t see the method on camera


Did you crack the neck and somehow head, guts and all you pulled it all down toward the tail?
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Dewey
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby Dewey » Sat Oct 03, 2020 8:09 am

I love bullheads but haven’t had any for a long time. I swear I grew up on them. As a kid bullheads were a main course at least a couple times a week in our house during the spring/summer. I remember cleaning pails full of them. Good times. 8-)
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby KRONIIK » Sat Oct 03, 2020 10:58 am

Sailfish_WC wrote:It seemed I couldn’t see the method on camera


Did you crack the neck and somehow head, guts and all you pulled it all down toward the tail?


Wasn't the OP, just an anonymous guy on Youtube, but yeah he cut dorsal fins off and then cross-cut down through the spine and then pulled head down toward tail while holding onto the meat/spine behind the cross-cut.

The head pulled the skin off the body, and most of the guts followed as well.

He still had to scrape the kidney tissue out.
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby KRONIIK » Sat Oct 03, 2020 1:07 pm

OOPS.

Regarding the above post; that guy did not cut the dorsal fins off first.
But some guys do in other similar videos.
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Re: Bull heads & family fish fry.

Unread postby ihookem » Tue Aug 30, 2022 2:23 pm

This reminds me of a kid I was kind of friends with over 40 yrs ago. His mom and dad were getting divorced and neither one would buy groceries for the 2 boys so the older friend would eat whatever he could find. I insisted I keep sheepshead when fishing Lake Winnebago. One day we caught 43 bullheads and he ate everyone . I even ate some and they were good. The friendship ended on Oct. 5 , 1979 when we went shining deer. Asking why we were not using the spotlight , he said ha dont need one, then we saw 2 fawns in the moonlight and out came the 22 lr. Told me to hold the flashlight , or start walking. We poached 2 deer that night and I regretted it ever since. However, the deer got eaten, even the heart and liver.


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