How To CATCH, CLEAN, and COOK Northern Pike. (Ice Out Ontario Pike)

[Music] what's up guys um we're back in the boat it's it's just it's an exciting time of year lakes are starting to open up there still is a lot of ice out on lake of the woods it will still be probably a week or two till it until it completely clears off but smaller lakes are open parts of lake of the woods are open and uh we're back on the water and today i want to do something a little bit different ice held pike is an activity i love to do one of one of one of those fish that are just ready to go as soon as the ice comes off but i don't do a catch and cook a pike catching cook because i think a lot of people have in their mind that pike aren't good to eat like no i just i just eat walleye i don't like eating pike it's like well i i'm willing to wager that if you're blindfolded you probably couldn't tell the difference i don't i don't think i can tell the difference maybe a slight consistency change but if northern pike are caught out of nice cold water and they're prepared properly it is amazing table fare and they can sometimes be a lot easier to catch the walleye so today uh we're casting a swim bait we might catch some walleye we got a heavy floral leader here this is a three three and a half inch swim bait made myself with my do it molds um 5 8 ounce jig we're using an 8 foot swim bait rod this is a g loomis imx pro i don't even know what this reel is this is a revo with 40 pound braid that's that's pretty much it for gear talk we're we're using heavier fluoro so there's a chance we get bit off by pike but i kind of want to have a chance to maybe catch some walleye today since it is the last day walleye season but the goal is to catch an eater-sized pike and i'm going to show you guys how to clean them because uh at some of the lodges i've worked at that's mainly what we ate was pike and not walleye and people love it so i want to share with you guys a little bit of how to catch them but more importantly how to clean them and some ways that i like to cook them so we're pretty shallow here we're in like five feet of water six feet of water so i'm kind of swimming it halfway up the water column might bump it off the bottom it was i was getting quite a bit of weeds when i was heading off the bottom but right now we're just searching this is a big mud flat at the mouth of a spawning bay and i think the fish are going to kind of be trafficking through oh here we go first bite on the swimbait oh and it is a beautiful northern pike and it's gone well the pike are in the bays let it be known oh right in the middle feeling another little guy hey not even not even bringing that one up to the camera for you guys but that is two fish and two casts this is my search bait this is what i'm starting with and this is a little three inch beautiful delectable j siemens j jig special oh oh that's a little better we might be switching over to full pike here shortly a little bit bigger don't put too much weight on it because as i mentioned i don't have a leader on this just like 30 pound fluoro but that is our first real pike sorry guys my camera died there but we got our first northern pike this is perfect eating size probably like a 22-incher we're bringing this guy back with us 27 and a quarter all right guys just so you know you cannot keep pike in the zone over 75 centimeters which is like 29 and a half inches that fish was like 27 so perfect eater so the flammable pike more than a lot of other species is often you're doing some fan casting which is just casting these big areas it's not you know when they're on weed beds they definitely can relate to very specific edges or spots but sometimes early in the year it's it's warm water it's these muddy bays and they can be kind of anywhere within this huge flat so you're you're just covering water essentially you're trying to pick it apart and you know cut it into pieces and try to hit as many angles as possible and different different pieces so you know i'm casting off the nose here i'm casting to the right towards shore there definitely can be pockets holding more fish but overall you're just trying to you know cover that water oh just got crushed i'm just gonna slow down a bit so often pike will still follow so i took my foot off the pedal i'm just gonna give it lots of pauses and oh i saw him there got him maybe that's why i missed him the first time wow why are we catching so many small pike my buddy john hoyer says pike or minus one point so i minus quite a few right now come on another what is this this nursery well we've hammered a lot of little ones we do have one perfect eater so i know the focus of this is catch clean cook pike because i think that's something everyone should learn how to do but we just have a big we did just have a big pike follow so i think i'm gonna try something bigger something with a little more a little more oof well guys you've probably heard me talk about headbanger swedish lure company that i've been doing a bunch of work with over the last couple years helping shoot some of their promo stuff and they got a new bait which one do we want we want fire tiger look at that this is called the fire tail really cool bait i think it's the perfect size for what we're doing here so it's got this cool little harness here this is going to screw into the nose all right then we're going to pin these hooks back inside here there you go i am using the bigger size harness on the smaller size bait let's see how that looks in the water unreal unreal i'll overlay some underwater footage of this all right we've caught lunch we're now looking to upgrade we're using the fire tail and we may catch the first pike in north america on it if we're lucky it's new i think it's coming out start of may probably could have picked a slightly heavier rod for this but i think it's going to work pretty good [Music] oh oh that's better that's better oh he's throwing towards me i can barely keep up to him he's still swimming towards me oh baby oh baby that's more like it yes this is my first pike on the fire tail that's a good one i'm gonna net him come on baby that's what we're talking about right there on the fire tiger fire tale and we got a beautiful fat ice out pike i got my pliers right here that'll be easy to pop all right that fish is going right back look how fat that fish is so good all right so as you saw me put together the harness before these hooks can actually break away from the entire rig and that's what makes it pretty neat and that was my first pike on the fire tail there we go look how that rig just breaks away and look at that lump on his stomach that's not healthy there's no way that's look how square that is wow i think what a lot of people don't realize is a lot of time when pike are in the shallow bays they're actually metabolizing after eating out deeper that's why sometimes you see you know tail sticking out of their mouths you see like a bourbon tail or a cisco tail they're not finding that bait in the back of oh oh nice nice fish they're not finding that bait in the back of the bay they're going deeper to feed for it wow these fish are fat out here not that long but definitely average size has gone up since i uh switched from this small swimbait another beautiful pike that fell victim to the new fire tale so cool i'm loving it oh what do we got he's swimming towards me oh oh that's bigger than i thought that's a nice pike bring him around this way wow they're all fat another nice northwest ontario jackfish slew snake pike she's gone i'd rather let go of her than rip off her gills trying to hold on guys i gotta level with you i've had some some technical difficulties today we had the mic die and then i realized the mic was on my jacket for the other part of it so i apologize if there were some issues if you hear like really loud music and not much talking it means that the audio is junk there's some water on the lens there too but we've caught some pike and i apologize for the technical difficulties i will do better but uh we got like half an hour left maybe catch a couple more and then we're going to the kitchen sam's kitchen the bites have just been so good on this big bait on the far tail oh they're still biting man i love how the hooks pull out of this bait that's like a european thing a lot of their soft plastics there have that have that sort of system this pike is nasty look at this adipose fin that is nasty this pike has had a rough life we're gonna get him back quick all right baby be free oh oh that feels good i was about to call last cast oh come on baby be the one not the one that's okay though we've had a fantastic afternoon of piken i will give the fire tail my stamp of approval a great day a good size pikes thank you guys for following along audio issues and all next time we will see you in the kitchen welcome back to the shop here's our pike beautiful 27 incher this is like perfect eating size yeah i think a lot of people are intimidated by pike there's really only one extra step for flaying them it is taking out the y bones but we're going to start by slitting down the middle and we're just slapping them is is i guess the term that i've heard before i'll try to do my best to keep this accessible so you guys can see what's going on i cut a lot of pike in my time guiding up north but i don't claim to be any sort of expert they do have an extra step i'm going to flip them here we'll start this way we are now going to cut behind the gill plate down until you hit that spine now we're going to run along the spine all the way to the tail shout out to my grandpa abe taves for teaching me how to cut pike how to cut walleye i will never be as good as him but i will keep trying as you can see you get a lot of meat off of a 27-inch pike look at that that's just that's just one half of it isn't that beautiful all right we're gonna flip it over here look at look what he's been eating there's a minnow that looks like the tail of a a cisco maybe or something right now we're slitting down the other side and i don't know i think there will be one side when you cut fish that you will be better at what i try to do now is not cut through the spine because if you cut through the spine it is tough to finish that fish off all right there's the other half as you can see i did i did medium i'd give that a a six seven out of ten maybe you can see there's a little more meat maybe in the back i could have kept but overall pretty good so a couple things that i'm going to want to trim this belly meat i can trim i can trim around that fin i mean you could eat some that belly meat if you want but let's start by taking out the ribs that is the edge of the ribs right there that's that's the piece we're taking out so we're trying to get the knife to go down and then to kind of scoop underneath it you could just cause if you cut straight down you're going to lose all that meat underneath the ribs so we are going to try and less is more when you're doing this so i'm trying to get underneath it and then i'm just trying to run that knife right along this i know i know guys there's lots of people much better cutting fish than me i know pike can be intimidating and the best way to do it is just start start doing it so now i'm kind of curling my knife up and trying to get underneath the ribs but you can see right there i'm just getting underneath it that's kind of where the ribs end all right ribs are out now as you can see there's still fin and some belly meat so i'm just gonna cut that out all right we are so close to done guys this is the step that people have to learn this is where it gets different from pike to walleye so right i'm going to hold it close to the camera here see those little white spots right there that's part of the y bone and that is the part that is the toughest to take out so the y bones go down and then kind of hook underneath so i'm going to cut on this side of the y bone i'm going to cut down till it hits it then i'm going to cut against them and then i'm going to cut on this side of the y bone and i'm going to cut down and then scoop underneath it kind of like the ribs i'm starting at the top and i'm getting as close as i can that y bone and i'm just running it down and you can hear it listen this you hear that that's the knife hitting the edge of the y bone so i'm going to keep running it down the y bones go until pretty close to the tail section right there and and this is where you're going to lose me this is going to get difficult now i'm going to turn the knife and i'm going to run my knife kind of flat along it so right now i made a little opening you can almost you can fold it open and you can see those y bones i can run my finger on them so those are the y ones that you're taking out so this meat is all going to get saved on top here so now the next step is i'm going on the bottom edge of the y bone there i'm running down all right and now i'm going to scoop underneath it and i'm going to connect to that other cut right there so now i'm going to scoop underneath and i'm turning the knife off see i'm turning my wrist i'm kind of just helping it along and trying to save as much meat as possible so it's okay if you cut all the way so right now at this point you can see that flap right there that i have that is the y bone that's that's the part that scare people from eating pike and it's really not that scary so the other thing you can do right now if you did a really good job of cutting you might be able to cut it out or you can just cut down from the top where those two cuts connected and now it will basically just pull out look at that i might have to help it at the end there a little bit boom so there you go as you can see just so you guys can see there once it focuses i kind of made a little flap on the top to get those bones out now it is boneless all the way through the tail section you might find a couple depending on how far you go so you're going to want to play it safe and go pretty close to the tail but there you have a boneless pike fillet we are going to skin it and we're going to cube it because we are going to make some sweet chili pike bites one thing about pike meat is it's definitely a firmer meat so it's better suited for a stir-fry if you're doing these little bites that sort of thing it just holds together a little bit better i like to grab that skin and just hold that knife flat and just kind of wiggle the skin back and forth there you go i'm i'm actually happy with i'm happy with how that turned out as you can see i left you know a little bit of meat on there but pretty good overall once again always just take that second to feel to feel the meat you know make sure you didn't leave any bones feel the edge of the ribs right down here near the the anal fin there's a little bit of tougher meat so we're going to cut that out and that is that's a good piece of meat i don't think you ever need to keep a pike over well you can't even keep a pike over i think it's 29.5 inches in ontario but really like a 25 to 27 inch pike is pretty perfect all right we're gonna cut this other one and we're gonna head to the kitchen [Music] not perfect but boneless so there we go that one pike has given us a good bounty of meat we're gonna wash it off cube it up and uh we'll meet you guys in the kitchen ladies and gentlemen welcome back to sam's kitchen we're cooking cooking the pike i caught as you can see we got a fair amount of meat we are gonna cube it up we're gonna deep fried we're gonna toss them some sweet chili sauce and then are you adding a stir-fry component to this or a little bit yeah sam's adding some veggies some greens um originally this is just gonna be sweet chili tossed pike um but sam's kind of upping it a little bit but anyways first thing we're gonna do is cube up the pike and we're gonna toss half of it and catch and cook spicy for me and half of it and catch and cook original for sam that's the size i'm going for right there check it out guys that's like perfect size little cubes there you know we're only gonna do this in one coat we're not gonna double coat it today so it won't be quite as spicy always if you want it spicier you could double coat it but we're going to get these little chunks wet roll around in the spicy and then we're going to set them aside all right now we're doing some original you took way more time and care with your pieces how come i don't get that boom spicy not spicy all right we're doing the original first boom oh yeah it cooks so fast we just completely fogged the lens and by we i mean me i love doing the the toss in different sauces because i just like i like the small chunks they're like boneless wings look at that oh that's good all right we're gonna put this next batch in quickly that's the bus the spicy is ready the nice thing about catch and cook i know this sounds like a sales pitch but it doesn't completely fall apart in the oil some stuff that's like bigger chunks will just completely disintegrate which is it's just part of it but more of a flour base which catch and cook is keep your oil fresh a little bit longer all right let's go inside we're starting with the original we're gonna dump the fish in the pan we'll have a little heat typically you know you would toss it in probably the same pan that you cook the fish in if you're doing a shore lunch type thing so i'm just gonna wait till the pan is a little bit hotter we're gonna add some sweet thai chili sauce that's what's going to make her sweet thai chili pike bites is that too much saucy i should have done this no no we're doing the flip okay do you know what i've just decided i have just decided this is my fish you film i want to cook sorry you cook your own fish you're just okay you're not doing no no style points for you no i don't want style points i want a light light dosing of sweet chili i want mine just covered in sauce i i believe that and i understand no i don't understand but i believe it look it now now it's heating up and i'm just about done here all right all right we added some more sweet chili sauce we're not gonna dump all this fish in that would just yeah i'm not gonna eat all this we'll eat maybe half now it's all oh this isn't tossing at all there's supposed to be this epic like fish flipping in the air but it ain't happening i i blame this on the sweet chili sauce we just got to do the manual stir all right i think we'll just put this right into my dish do you want to you this is this is you're doing all this other stuff let's let's get let's get the real chef to talk about this all right let's see the let's see the presentation so what i was going to do in here i put some broccoli yellow pepper and pineapple just like that then we take our 4k crunchy noodles and then i have a little bit of carrots with a tiny tiny tiny smidgen of lemon juice nice a piece to resist sauce some ketchup cook like oh that looks good sam wow we're actually gonna take a photo of this this is this is like this is good good job thank you and then the only difference for jay's fish was that there will be rice underneath and the spicy fish all right the taste test is that good i put mine on rice sam's on the crunchy noodles this is good i will take credit for the pike sam can take the credit for everything else we are going to say grace and dig into some delicious ice out pike thank you guys for following along don't be intimidated by pike they're not that tough to clean and they taste so good they get overlooked by so many people thank you guys for watching don't forget to wear your life jacket and where are we at now i don't know pick up your trash pick up your trash see you guys you

Channel: Jay Siemens

Views: 250,517

Rating: 4.8924417 out of 5

Keywords: northern pike, fishing, clean, fillet, headbanger

Id: F8utgNmW-yM

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/GuyInAChair]

Not my video, nor am I affiliated with it in anyway. But I thought it fit this sub, and am hoping it gets a little bit of life since it's a really cool idea.