Dip Net Fishing for Hooligan | Taste Test + Smoking and Canning

well it is officially spring here in alaska and although the lakes and the rivers are still frozen where we live we're gonna head south we're going on our first fishing trip of the year we're super excited we're targeting new fish we've never caught before we do not need fishing poles we don't need bait we need this net our waders cooler we're waking up early tomorrow morning we're gonna hit the road bow [Music] [Music] [Music] all righty gotta refuel ourselves we're almost there we're in anchorage alaska and 6 50 in the morning our goal was to be fishing by seven we're gonna be a little late that's all right we got about 40 miles to go uh we're heading to a river called 20 mile and we've been there before but we've never fished it so we're looking forward to it see if we can find our way back to the highway here you think there's been on-ramp right if you go all the way around yeah oh my gosh i know like i really want you to go slow through here okay okay here we go here we go there we go you're in the role i know when i got your camera in the way there i can't see anything okay now that we did that yes that's kind of before you got to walk that boy well we made it and we're gonna head down there and see what things are looking like it's a little bit drizzly so we came prepared we've got our waders and there's some seagulls down there so that is a good sign so we're dip knitting we're catching hooligan or smelt they're very small fish i think they get maybe like 10 inches long and we're going to use this net to catch them we've never done this before we don't really know what we're doing so we're going to drag this net on the bottom and we'll see if we catch some fish got our bucket in case we do so we're out here early season fishing for these this run of fish the hooligans and i think right now because it's early it's best to come right around high tide or right when it's going out we're here a few hours after high tide high tide was like 3 30 am this morning we took a little while to get rolling so i'm not sure if we will have much luck today we may take a little break and then come back when i think that next high tide is i think that's closer to 4 pm out here in remote alaska fishing next to the highway we're actually the only ones out here there are some people fishing right there and they caught a few fish so they're in here i don't know if i'm just doing it wrong or the fish just aren't coming in my net but i'm trying to drag it along the bottom because that's where uh we've read that the fish swim they're not very strong swimmers and they try to swim along the bottom nothing yet we might try up there by the railroad tracks in a little bit if we don't get anything so well still no action we're gonna change up the game plan we're gonna take a little break eat some food and we're trying to come out with the tides change a little bit see if that makes a difference not a single fish not yet [Applause] that's nice that's almost a meal right there you go oh yeah here we go [Applause] [Music] oh my god it's me they're down on the bottom oh they're in there oh too look at him look at his coloring look how cute look at that that's like 20. that's a lot look at that that's awesome it's like 10. oh that's more than 10. [Applause] i don't know well we're only happy we could still put in there okay oh i'm so sorry fish it's almost like when you go halloween trick-or-treating and you have the um you know the pillowcase full of candy but instead it's hooligan hey they get beat up out there all right things are picking up how long thank you well paid off that we came back i think we drove around for about an hour took the dogs out and came back and i caught one was super excited and then we just kept catching them i mean it was fun sometimes you're getting like i'm pretty sure i had like 20 in one scoop which i don't know i thought that was pretty good but they're cool little fish i don't know we're gonna try them we'll see how they are it's really fun out here we came out here on a weekday so it wasn't really that packed and i looked up the tide tables i had it backwards it was actually high tide when we got here and we started catching them once the tide was actually going out pretty cool that worked out really well i wanted to show you guys there are a bunch of males we caught mainly males and you can tell because they have this big like dry spiny ridge and the females let me see if i can find one do not they're totally totally smooth so pretty cool we predominantly caught males that was really fun i definitely did not catch as many as eric did but still really fun we're gonna head home it's a little bit over two hours and then we have a lot of work ahead of us there we go didn't you get we didn't get you no fish dude [Applause] right there do you want to put the little wood we made it back to the cabin we got the smoker out we're going to get started processing all these hooligan and we're going to do a lot of different things with them we're going to smoke them and can them we're going to smoke them and eat them fresh off the smoker we're going to fry them we're going to save some for ice fishing season and i think we're even going to save some for the chickens super excited because this is a new fish to us and we've got a lot to get started on right yep that's a big old bucket of fish how do you have a tactic i was thinking uh i could grab them out of here so i'll stand here and then i'm gonna cut them put them in here and then you take them from here and scoop the guts out and put them in here okay so where do you want to put the guts we've never done this before and there's a few different ways to do it some people take the heads off we're just going for the guts right we're just going to get them we're going to leave the heads on we talked to some some locals out there that were also dip netting for these fish they gave us some good tips so we're excited to try these let me see if i can get that cut better there we go little tiny fish loose little things yeah we're gonna try to count them too we don't really know how many we have no and i'm gonna use this little knife it's a little havalon has a little removable blade so this thing's like a razor i'm gonna do this and then i'm also gonna try it with scissors i've seen people cut up with scissors see what works the best for me is that hard to do or no no there's not much in here yeah as far as guts go and we've even seen people do these without gutting them but yeah we're going to get them that may be a more traditional way to do it and then the ones that we're saving for ice fishing or the ones that we're gonna save for the chickens we're just gonna leave those whole we're not gonna waste any time getting those absolutely chickens need all those extra nutrients man these fish are cold this is a girl see to her eggs oh oh my gosh there's a lot of eggs what you should not eat them wrong is there a worm there's a worm okay there we go it wasn't moving because it was frozen but yeah i had a feeling they have worms are from that they're from the ocean don't eat them raw we've read there's so many different ways to eat these guys and even process them so i think we just kind of figured out what we want to try we really like the fruit the fried crispy fish salmon skin fish so i think we're gonna really like them fried and we also really like smoked yeah this should be good excited for this there's no limit for these guys when we were dip netting you just have to be a resident where we were at and have your fishing license so again not sure how many we have and a lot of people like everyone saying they do different things with them some people strictly just catch these things for using as bait but we're gonna give them a try since we've never tried them this may sound strange but these fish when we pulled them out of the water actually smelt a little bit like a fresh cucumber or cucumber roots if you've ever grown cucumber roots um they do not now they smell more like fish yeah that was kind of something that we read before we caught them that they smell like cucumber and we were like what damn they actually did smell like cucumber look you can see this one's a female see the eggs yeah i know it's not appetizing to think about but a lot of the fish here do actually have worms in them um so i'll just show you a close-up of what they look like you can always tell these ones are not moving because they're very cold and if we you know chilled them a lot longer they'd eventually die i think you want to do it for like a week at least to be safe or cooking it of course cooking it works too they're pretty hard to see but they are a little bit harder and you know what they actually they move when they're not frozen so then you know they're worms we wanted to get to fishing these last year actually but we tried we tried last year we did try yeah um there's a large river that runs near us and it has these run of the hooligan it's much shorter time frame you really have to time it right and it's better to have a boat yeah we tried to do it from shore but it was just really high water so the run that we went to runs for like a month until the king salmon come in and it's just a much longer yeah and a lot of access a lot of shore access it's a lot of people can go there and a lot of people can fit there and you don't have to have a boat there so yep so we decided to take the trip down it paid off hopefully in the future we'll be able to do the run here because like errol said it's a lot closer they come in super thick we've heard we've seen pictures and things where they cut you'll do a scoop and you'll get a whole five gallon bucket and a scoop so oh my gosh look how big this one is it's good that's a male right yeah it's like a big one it's a big one some folks even use these for fertilizer for their garden yeah i don't intend to do that we just use fish carcasses for our fertilizer the leftovers yep and there's pretty cool information you can find about these fish online that just date way back to with ways that people used to use them and they also call them candle fish because the there's such a high oil content in these fish that you can actually dry them out super dry and you can light the tail it will actually burn like a candle maybe we should try that when we smoke one yeah i don't know i don't know what these are going to taste like you know i don't know something we've yet to do is like try to air dry the fish yeah something that's something we want to look into maybe for salmon you do a salt brine and it has to be pretty specific i think and then you air dry it yeah so we haven't tried that yet so we've got about all that we are going to need to gut the rest of them they're left in the bucket which is about half the bucket we're not going to get those because we're going to save these for the chickens and we're also going to save them for uh ice fishing so we're gonna freeze some of those and we'll have some bait to use when we're ice fishing and we just gotta finish cleaning the rest of these we're all finished up and we're gonna do a final count i think and i'm gonna bring this over to the chickens ouch they're not very nice chickens okay that's my hand got blood on your hands they're going for it [Laughter] so i'm kind of just joking about our chickens being carnivores they're omnivores they ate a lot of bugs and things like that of course as we all know but they do of course eat the worms most likely and we have a warming schedule that we put them on so well we ended up with a little over 200 i think my count was 204 to 205 a lot pretty crazy yeah because when we were scooping those things they came in quick sometimes there's a lot in that net we're going to clean them a way that a few people out there told us that we could clean them and uh we're gonna do vinegar and salt not sure if they add any water but i'm just gonna just straight vinegar and salt make it kind of gritty we're gonna kind of scrub them and then we've got some clean water and we're just gonna get them really clean because we are eating the whole fish you know we're eating the head and everything so and they come out of a beach where it's a little sandy sandy sandy gritty you want to put some in there for me you don't want to use any water no just something here now i think we're going to get so it's kind of gritty so we can kind of scrub maybe i'll add a little it's up to water do you want me to do more of this that's pretty good let's see it see what that does i think this is good but i think what we may need is like an intern bucket you got to scrub them and yeah that's what was like like a one with holes i don't even know i think i can put them in here and kind of scrub them and then take out the queen no i mean that works that looks pretty good to me nice little fish into the bucket oh whoa then we got like 80 to there you know i'm just not doing all 200 right speaking of which these are the ones that are not processed so yeah i've heard about that so that's it kind of a white meat i don't even know what they taste like but they're just known for their high oil content yeah and i don't know if that just comes out when you cook them because to me they just look like a fish the bones are like tiny yeah so um yeah those get tender we eat you eat the bones so let's see i don't know they look like really good little looking little fish yeah i'm actually i'm kind of hungry for these i mean what is she saying she's like more fish i think that's what she's doing she's looking at us she's literally staring at us so well here is our cleaned hooligan i rinsed them a bunch so i think i rinse them like five times and we're gonna do a brine on these we're gonna do a salt and sugar i think i'm gonna do about a cup of salt and almost two cups of sugar and we're probably gonna let them sit for about half an hour all right we're gonna get our smoker fired up what'd you say [Applause] um we're gonna start the fire with just some spruce get it going and then we're gonna be smoking a little again with some alder well it's probably about 40 minutes and we're going to rinse the brine off of the fish we i think we're kind of going for like a salty but not like extremely like really salty so we're going to rinse this all off and i'm going to put aside 10 those are the ones we're gonna fry up and just eat them like that and then the rest of them are gonna go on the smoker okay we're gonna smoke but we're actually getting hungry so we're gonna we're gonna try the hooligan we're gonna cook some up first we have to make some dressing for our fish i'm gonna get started with making some mayonnaise i've got olive oil and an egg in here i'm just gonna immersion blend it i'm gonna add some pepper some salt we're also gonna do some mustard and some vinegar i'm gonna blend it once more we're gonna add a bunch of blue cheese crumbles and some cilantro that we have this is definitely not any sort of special dip by any means i'm just something we kind of came up with we use kefir a lot too that's a really good nice thing for dressings or dip i guess you could say i'm gonna add a little bit more salt but that is delicious so we're gonna fry this fish and we're gonna do mousse tallow and i'm gonna put some olive oil in there we're getting this pan heated up gonna get it pretty hot we're gonna do the simple because we want to know how these things taste we're just gonna do salt and pepper cornmeal and flour does anyone ever do an egg wash or they just no they just get them they're wet so i was thinking not to the eggs is that better sticking them in yeah even before they're real shame well they're almost done they're smelling really good but for some reason i don't know why but i'm really excited to try these we cook a lot of weird things but these just seem like they're going to be really good what i'm trying to do is get them really crispy so i'm not just cooking them on one side then the other side i'm kind of just flipping them like every minute or so and i'm just trying to really crisp it up so it's like a real crunchy cracker almost good are they cool enough probably okay we're going to try them yep we're here we're ready to do it um are you going for the head first no i'm actually going to take it tail down okay i'm really excited yeah we're going to hit the head something smelled really good i can't tell if that was that i'm just extremely hungry so i'm not even gonna oh they're hot okay no bones i mean i can't taste any i haven't gotten like a bone and a taste it just tastes like a it's really good you can get past the part that you're eating the head i don't even know what you're talking about i don't feel good i feel like the head was actually the best part like the crunchiest it's totally oily oh no i can feel the bones a little bit you can kind of feel them a tiny bit but you can eat them you kind of feel them in your throat hmm you can't feel them no but i don't like bones like that no i feel one on my tongue because i just ate the fin such tiny bones i don't even think those could be harmful to be honest they're really tiny yeah i'm starving we haven't eaten in a while so i'm just actually like i'm really really hungry this is what delicious okay good i'm not sure if it'd be my first pick like if i had to go get something i don't know if this was my number one pick it was delicious what would you say it's not fishy at all nope like it does not taste like fish not even close not even at all it's good it's actually really good i feel like i probably should let that one cool a little bit that was delicious i love burnt and crispy so this is right up my alley so i just feel like it's good i didn't quite enjoy how mushy the fish is it's mushy a little mushy but good crispiness you're gonna have another one yeah the dressing is so good we should eat we should eat the head just like as is maybe i'm gonna tell you right now okay the head is where it is at the head is all the flavor it's just the plate i mean just flavor it tastes like tastes like the fish skin when we eat the fish skin the head to me has the most flavor the best flavor really good really good fish yeah essence it tastes like a corn dog or something uh-huh really good the head was awesome i got i don't know this blue cheese dressing you made i gotta get some of that that's really good i mean i would definitely eat this again i think we just have to like we you know we change how we eat like what we and how often i mean i don't know how often i would eat this i would definitely cook these up again probably once a year like when we went and caught them i don't think i'd keep them like frozen in the freezer and then thaw them out and then fry them up year round they're really good but they're i don't know to me like a once a year type of thing they're not like it's a big filet of salmon or something like that they're just kind of a cool really good little thing to eat that's how i feel spot on it's just i think it's because we don't typically eat this all the time but i don't feel like we'll eat it all that often but they are good no they're really good once we can them up we're thinking about turning some of those into dips we've even heard you can use these in cakes you know make a little potato cake fish cakes yeah it almost has a texture of like overcooked bacon kind of like poppy like airy uh-huh like burnt bacon yeah the oil it's probably the oil yummy you basically fried them right it's got a nice white meat i mean it i don't know if it's extremely oily but it's pretty oily it's crunchy the head's crunchy no mush no nothing just crunch oh well is that the spine yeah we don't need a lot of really high oil foods like this fried so yeah it is a little much kind of intense yeah i'm feeling like i'm done after this little batch final thoughts these are good i like them they're oily they're greasy maybe a little too oily for us but i'm looking forward to trying those smoked ones this would be perfect for the tickets how many more could you get like 60. that's too many i mean that's too many in here well we got a nice bag full of bait slash food for the chickens come the winter time let's go check on the smokers see how the fish is doing okay yeah they're they're starting to smoke for sure i think they've been going for about two two hours so they're coming pretty good i'm pretty sure these ones are ready to can uh when you're canning them you don't want to smoke until they're real dry you just want to smoke them a little bit get a little that smoke flavor so i'm gonna pull these ones out and we can get things ready start canning them then i'm gonna leave just a few on there maybe like four and we're gonna smoke them for a while until they're actually cooked and done and dry and we're gonna try them that way but yeah this is looking pretty good look at that this is dripping off of him oh my gosh that is so much oil coming off this fish i don't know about that here you want it oh he likes it that for me we've got our jars ready we're using half pints and i'm not sure how many we're going to fill i have 12. i'm just going to be breaking these guys probably in half and putting them into the jars all right i think i just put three fish in here maybe four actually i lost count but that is pretty good looking we're just gonna leave a little space we're not gonna add anything to them they have a bunch of oil we do not add oil or water or broth or anything to our fish and i've gotta finish dresses we're going to be processing these jars for 90 minutes at 11 pounds in our pressure canner okay our hooligan is done we're gonna open this up it's already the pressure has already gone out of there oh they look really good they were they're a little bit of a softer mushier fish so i'm glad they look like they held together pretty well in the jars lots of liquid in there that just comes from the fish and we found smoke in the fish you always get a little bit firmer of a fish for when you're canning so we like to always smoke rather than raw packing we don't eat anchovies or sardines much but this kind of reminds me of them i have a few different ideas to incorporate them in recipes we've seen using them as dips sounds really good to me and even like putting them just on crackers and also stuffing stuffing some mushrooms that's one we definitely want to try we have totally worked up an appetite after working today we're going to repurpose those fish we fried up earlier and make fish tacos well this is springtime here we got a lot of rain these storms come on quick we're smoking in the rain these fish are taking forever to smoke i got four little fish on there i'm gonna smoke them till i finish them i switched to birch because i ran off alder and i don't feel like going all the way back there and cutting down some more so i'm gonna stoke this fire again we're gonna get this thing smoking some more and then we're gonna head inside we're making our tacos oh that's a fish taco the whole fish [Music] uh yes i would like some extra sauce ready i tasted a lot of blue cheese it just tastes like a really good fish just like a fresh fish taco the fish tastes so good like a fresh the fish has flavor fish doesn't taste fishy has flavor it's really good really good look at that that's a fish taco right there around i'm telling you i eat winter potatoes and i'm in love i'm gonna i'm gonna open a restaurant i'm gonna make a taco it's called it's gonna be called the blue fish it's gonna be a fish taco with blue cheese because blue cheese on a fish taco i've never had that and that is so good well the smoke tool again is done it was probably the longest thing i've ever smoked i'm pretty sure we smoked it for like 15 or 16 hours we did it last night and then i woke up about eight this morning and started up the smoker again it's finally done we're gonna see if it was worth it we're gonna see how these things taste i don't know the dogs seem like they're pretty interested in them but you gave me the crispy one yeah that's the crispiest one i don't know why this doesn't appear appetizing this doesn't look as good as beautiful before pretty dry pretty dry let me set this down it's also possible we didn't do these the correct way let's try it's better than you would think oh yeah dang it's actually pretty good a little salty yeah i'd say that's actually decent last night when we ate the hooligan they were really good in the what do we have fish tacos tacos yeah the the fish even now do you agree they have like a good got a good flavor it's got a good flavor it's actually pretty good i don't know if this is how i would eat a fish per se but it's i would make fish tacos again out of these probably best way we ate them i feel like now the bones are more pronounced i was just going to say that i can actually feel the bones and taste them a little harder those are going down i think with the um the ones we can we were talking about last night and i think we're going to do that like on crackers yeah a little salt on there maybe some fresh herbs yeah i think that'll be good i think for us for this first time we feel like although they're very flavorful fish we prefer them more in recipes rather than just as this as a snack so yeah we went out there fishing you know it's it's it's easy if the fish are there to probably take too many of these fish so we're kind of happy with what we took we took maybe four gallons so yeah which was 200 200 fish uh arrow wanted to take more but i told her hey let's try these things first and see if we like them the head was good i'm sorry i just ate that oh you ate the head absolutely i think i would do this again next year because it was really fun to get out early season and to fish for them you know just one swoop get it so very very purposeful fish for a lot of folks here i want to try the head they're tasty the head it's just so weird eating the fish head for me it tastes good oh there's the spine i'm not liking that i can taste more of the bones they're way more like obvious that's like part of the carcass ma'am why does the head taste so good the i don't know all the stuff you can pull the bones right out yeah all in all it was a fun experience we hope you guys enjoyed our adventure yep we'll definitely be out there again next year catching us in hooligan we'll see you next time i was not thinking and then i and then once the flavor i'm not a huge fan of the really charred smoky it's super smoked what's that the flavor is good i just prefer them in a recipe is that like bones they have on me almost tastes like a can of tuna or tastes like something like a real nice mild salty seafood essence you

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 329,178

Rating: 4.9532738 out of 5

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, cabin life, tiny house alaska, fishing in alaska, cabin living, off grid living alaska, off grid cabin, alaska fishing, garden alaska, homestead alaska, fishing salmon alaska, canning fish, canning smoked fish, smoker for fish, hooligan, smelt, diptnet alaska, dipnetting, diy smoker, smoker fish, wilderness alaska, outdoors alaska, living off grid, 20 mile river, anchorage alaska, willow alaska

Id: ut8RbcjjRb4

Length: 42min 41sec (2561 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021