Frying small trout

Over the past 3 days of fishing at waverly park, each day I left with my limit of 5 trout. No trout was longer than 10.5 inches, the littlest being about 8. Any smaller than that I let them go. I took those 15 trout today and prepared them for frying.
Just cut the head off and cut a slit all the way down the bottom of the fish lengthwise and gut them. Try to get out the mud vein if you can. I just use my thumbs and rub it out. I put all but two cleaned trout in zip lock freezer bags and froze them. The two I left out got cooked up about an hour ago and man where they good. This is the easiest way to cook small trout after they have been cleaned.

1. Coat the fish with flour. (you can add salt and pepper or any other seasoning to the flour to give a spicy kick)
2. melt half a stick of butter in a frying pan on med high and get hot enough to fry.
3. Fry on med high for about 5-6 min on each side. When they turn golden brown they are usually ready.

Now all you have to do is reach in thru the slit you made and pull out the bones. They should come out in one piece if you grab the top of the spinal cord. squirt with some fresh lemon juice and crunch some fresh pepper over the meat and you are ready to eat. Its ok to eat the skin but you can peel it off if you want. Hope someone trys this out cause its good.

That sounds very good. I never tried to pull those bones out like that before. That sure would make it easier to eat them.

An old toothbrush works great for getting out that "mud vein".

I spend a week at Laurel with friends every year. We clean 150-250 trout every year. If you slit the vein lengthwise with your fillet knife and then scrape down it with a plastic spoon it cleans most of the junk out. What's left can easily be rinsed out with water.

Keep the head on while cooking on thats where all the flavors at. Cut it off after it's cooked.

[QUOTE=ckline2006;444247]I spend a week at Laurel with friends every year. We clean 150-250 trout every year. If you slit the vein lengthwise with your fillet knife and then scrape down it with a plastic spoon it cleans most of the junk out. What's left can easily be rinsed out with water.[/QUOTE]

I hope there are 20 or 30 of you catching all those trout, because if not, it sounds like some game laws "might" have been broken.

Just saying.

And before you jump all over my butt, the way the possession rules are written ****. For a guy that likes to rent a house boat and legally fish, there really is no way for him to keep fish more than 2 day legally.

Prepared/FROZEN fish should not count towards the possession limit, meaning if you have a limit ready to be cleaned THAT should be the fish in question. NOT what you caught yesterday or the day before.

Later,

Geo

[QUOTE=newt;444176]Over the past 3 days of fishing at waverly park, each day I left with my limit of 5 trout. No trout was longer than 10.5 inches, the littlest being about 8. Any smaller than that I let them go. I took those 15 trout today and prepared them for frying.
Just cut the head off and cut a slit all the way down the bottom of the fish lengthwise and gut them. Try to get out the mud vein if you can. I just use my thumbs and rub it out. I put all but two cleaned trout in zip lock freezer bags and froze them. The two I left out got cooked up about an hour ago and man where they good. This is the easiest way to cook small trout after they have been cleaned.

1. Coat the fish with flour. (you can add salt and pepper or any other seasoning to the flour to give a spicy kick)
2. melt half a stick of butter in a frying pan on med high and get hot enough to fry.
3. Fry on med high for about 5-6 min on each side. When they turn golden brown they are usually ready.

Now all you have to do is reach in thru the slit you made and pull out the bones. They should come out in one piece if you grab the top of the spinal cord. squirt with some fresh lemon juice and crunch some fresh pepper over the meat and you are ready to eat. Its ok to eat the skin but you can peel it off if you want. Hope someone trys this out cause its good.[/QUOTE]

Here's another way to try with some of your trout: Clean as you did (I assume you scraped the scales from the skin), and you can leave the head and all the fins on if you want (I do).

Place fish in baking dish, and brush with olive oil. Season (rub) each fish with salt/pepper and I sometimes add a little "Old Bay Seasoning powder". Add some butter to the dish. Squeeze on a little lemon or lime juice. Cover with foil and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Then give me a call and I'll come over and eat them for you....:p:p

The way I fry small trout is, I first skin them ,cut off head and gut them. I dip in cornmeal and fry in crisco oil. If you get them nice and brown , you can eat all the rib bones and all you have left is the backbone. Very tasty.