Blue Gills as survival food

This spring has been a great one for Blue gills and big red eared sunfish. Our area lakes are just pan fish factories producing these tasty slabs. We just finished putting up 600 fillets from 300 nice 8 inch size Blue gills. We are moving on now to Pike and Walleye and some of the areas abundant Brook and Brown Trout. The lake I live on is a huge pantry in itself with Pike, Panfish, perch, turtles,Swans, Geese, ducks, and many edible plants like Cat tails and water cress. But the many weeds and shallows make our lake and the three other lakes around us blue gill factories. Kingfish

 

Bluegills and shell crackers are two of my favorite fish to eat. The only thing I like better is crappie, sauger, and green trout.

 

Bream and cheese grits - COMFORT food!

 

Not only is it excellent survival food, but it's one hell of a lot of fun. Also I have been told fishing extends your lifespan, as each day spent fishing doesn't count against your allotted time on this earth...... jus sayin'

 

I am gettin' the itchin' for some fishin'..... thanks for the idea

Needed a break from job searching anyways

 

Blue gill's are indeed very tasty...
It's hard to beat a frying pan of Bluegill's...
and if you ever hear the term Sac-Au-Lait used....it's just a crappie...
ccc...

 

Panfishing is one of my favorite pass-times this time of year. love to catch me some gills and paper mouths.

 

if you make a safe haven for minnows and add them to your pond
youll get even more gils
same goes for feeding them pellets
the panfish feed train very easily and fatten up real fast

 

I have an old Shakespear fiberglass fly rod with a shimano open face which makes catching brim a rip.

 

im curious how youre storing so much fish.

 

Good grief Tacmotusn, I'm new to this forum and so far I have agreed with you 100% on the threads I've read so far. LOL

 

Just bought two new open faced light weight rigs---you have put a "hankerin" on me. My favorite rig is to add a 6# leader about 5 feet long with a surface popper to a top water plug(with one treble). Cast it and just before it strikes the water you hit the stop. The plug will drop and the popper will extend past it. Just a wee bit of tugging will make the popper do its trick. Bream(well most any) will tear it up especially early or late. Love fishing just before a rain. Seems the fish know it is feeding time. Do not become a lightning rod.

 

My favorite rig is a 'bream buster' telecoping pole with light line, a red bobber and a good fat earthworm. Two or three of these out, and just wait til they start hitting!
When Dad and I fished the local lake a lot, we knew where many good spawning beds were. Later they drained the lake and the logs floated and moved when they refilled it. Ruined our fishing!

 

Guess my favorite way to catch pan fish is to wade the creeks and fish with a small spinner or popper fly. Next is to fish the "lakes" in the nearby creek from a canoe or Jon boat.

 

We freeze up to 600 bluegill fillets every year along with 48 Whitefish fillets(thats one limit), pike, walleye and crappie. W e have a large chest freezer. W e dont freeze much salmon or trout as they dont keep as well as the milder white flesh of the Bluegills and other inland lake fish.. Fish makes up over 30% of our protein intake.

600 bluegill fillets is really not that much fish. That is 20 quart ziploc bags with 30 little fillets in each bag. That allows us 20 meals of bluegill per year. That leaves 345 days for other kinds of fish and or meat. So as you can see 600 bluegill fillets does not feed us for long.

WE e at most trout and Salmon fresh. So far this season we have had Brook trout 4 times and will be getting some young King Salmon as soon as we get some east winds. There is a good crappie bite going on here right now. I would like to freeze about 10 packs(300 fillets) of them. KF

 

A good non time consuming way is to build a fish trap. They are illegal but in a survival situation the laws become--well secondary. Simply go by once or twice daily and pick up your fish. Good youth job that allows you to tend to more things. Cat fishing would be more productive.

 

Most of you know this, but to make eating panfish easy, and not waste meat filleting, just make two cuts along the dorsal and ventral fins (after scaling and beheading) and pull the entire assemblies out with fisherman's pliers... all the needle-like fin bones that can stick in your craw come out, and then you can eat the entire fish like corn on the cob... no adipose bones left in the fish - just the basic skeleton, the bones of which don't come loose.

 

I believe a pictorial is due.

 

I fillet all fish without gutting or taking off the heads. The heads and carcass can be ground for animal food if need be or can make a fish soup stock. Also carcasses can be buried in the ground and used as fertilizer. I fillet all fish boneless. Kingfish