Even a novice fisherman knows that the most delicious fish is the one that remains alive before cooking. If the pond is near the house, there are no problems: this is how it is delivered home. In winter, there is also no need to worry about the safety of the fish: the catch will freeze and remain in its original form for a long time. How to keep fish fresh in the warm season, being away from civilization for several days?
In caught but still living fish, metabolism continues and immunity operates. Thanks to this, it does not spoil. As soon as it dies, it is attacked by bacteria from the outside and decomposed by enzymes from the inside. First, the entrails and gills deteriorate. The higher the air temperature, the faster the fish will rot.
Anglers are doing the wrong thing by simply throwing a fishnet or kukan into the water. Make sure the fish is as comfortable as possible in uncomfortable conditions. Choose a place:
You need the right cage:
Pike and other sharp-toothed specimens should not be left in a fabric cage, because they can easily get out of there by biting through the fabric. For predator fish, it is better to prepare a kukan by attaching a metal loop to the end. Place it in the shade too.
It is believed that only crucian carp survive in cages, which don’t care about captivity, and the noble fish will die. However, if you pay attention to the catch and do it as described, any fish will remain alive for a long time.
Do not forget to periodically check the condition of the fish in the cage. If you find her asleep or inactive, take care to preserve her.
It is known that a fish that has fallen asleep is inferior in taste not only to live fish, but also to fish that were killed before losing consciousness. Therefore, if you notice that the fish in the cage is barely alive, isolate it, immediately gut it and salt it.
A novice fisherman should remember that under no circumstances should he:
Treat your catch like a human being. Otherwise, the trophy will not bring joy and the expected taste.
Thus, with desire and some effort, you can even bring back catch from a long summer fishing trip in satisfactory condition. But if fishing has entered your life seriously and for a long time, it’s worth buying a refrigerator to preserve your catch. And while you are there, you can use the services of storing caught trophies until you leave home.
In recent years, lakes, rivers and reservoirs in Central Russia have begun to noticeably decline. The fish in the catches of spinners becomes high-class gear, combined with the skill of the fisherman, which can no longer significantly compensate for the impoverishment of reservoirs. When there is simply no fish as such, nothing can be done. “Cultivation” and pollution of water bodies, excessive fishing by various kinds of poachers, as well as the predatory actions of some “amateur” fishermen, “sports” fishermen who strive to catch as much as possible at any cost - all this leads to the fact that the natural reproduction of fish does not keep up with its withdrawal or is completely disrupted. To get the opportunity to calmly fish with a spinning rod with the hope of catching something decent, you have to go far away, away from big cities, because there is almost nothing left in nearby public water bodies.
In such a situation, willy-nilly, you pay special attention to the behavior of your hobby colleagues. Caring for fish is a sign of a decent fisherman. A real spinning angler on a successful fishing trip will not take too much, will let go of small change, will not let the catch spoil or go to waste, and will use all the fish he catches for the greatest benefit for himself and his loved ones.
Keep alive.
Consider, for example, catching a predator from a boat. To preserve the most valuable qualities of freshly caught fish, you must try to keep it alive until the end of fishing. For this, a good kukan with reliable fasteners made of rigid stainless wire with a diameter of 2.5–3 mm is best suited. Each fish needs a separate fastener corresponding to the size of its mouth. Then the fish, while in the water, will be able to breathe freely.
It is better to place a predator on the clasp of a kukan by carefully piercing both jaws closer to the tip of the “nose” (this is more reliable) and thereby injuring the fish as little as possible. Under no circumstances should the fastener be passed through the gills: the fish will quickly die from the loss of blood that will flow from the wounded gills.
Kukan.
The kukan should be about two meters long and heavy enough so that the fish sinks deeper under its weight.
To reduce resistance when the boat moves, the fasteners should be placed along the kukan at a distance of 20–30 cm, then the fish on the fasteners will follow the boat in single file. The strength of the fasteners must be such that they do not fail when caught on grass, bushes, snags...
Fish whose gills or blood vessels are damaged so that they bleed should not be placed on the kukan; they will die anyway. It is best to store it separately, for example in a damp canvas bag in the shade at the bottom of the boat. First you need to cut the gill bridge and let the blood drain.
Shipping.
If everything is done correctly, then on a good kukan, predatory fish can survive all day. Then it becomes possible to deliver her home alive. Once removed from water, they will live much longer if, before transportation, each one is wrapped in a damp cloth that retains moisture well, such as an old waffle or linen towel.
But when it is several hours away from the river to home, it is better to euthanize the fish before leaving by making a deep puncture with a knife at the base of the head, and then removing the entrails and gills. If this is not done, the fish will still fall asleep on the way and will quickly begin to lose its presentation, and with it its taste.
My village house is located on the river bank, about fifty meters from the water, so if I wish, while in a boat, I can throw a spoon directly into my garden. In such conditions, it is always possible to bring fish into the yard live on a kukan. In the yard, I carefully remove it from the fasteners, release it into a large container with running water and keep it there until processing begins, but no more than a day, so that it does not lose quality.
In the garden.
At night, I always cover the container with live pikes in the garden with planks on top so that the predators do not jump out. Being captive near the river, the pike somehow sense where the water is, and some of them jump exactly in the direction of the river, and then try to make their way to the water, although there is a fence, cats, rats, etc. in the way. One day, one of the fish somehow managed to push the planks apart, jump out (perhaps after several attempts) and walk about ten meters through the wet grass. She was prevented from moving further by a fence, near which I found her in the morning, eaten by cats that had managed to gnaw out large sections of the flesh. The pike was still fresh, with red gills and suitable for food, of course, after careful trimming of the eaten areas.
Another time, also in the morning, I found a two-kilogram pike caught the day before in the thick grass in the corner of the garden. The fish was intact, without cuts or scratches, but its scales were slightly dry. Obviously, she lay there for quite a long time, more than one hour, but when I picked her up from the ground, she quietly moved her gill covers, demonstrating amazing vitality.
Once I tried to lower the fish into the tank without removing it from the cukan, in the hope that the heavy chain would prevent it from jumping out, but I was mistaken. The next morning one of the fish was hanging on a kukan from the outside of the trough! She was dead, with white gills. I gave it to the cats and did not conduct any more such experiments.
There was also a case in my practice when a pike tried to escape from captivity not at night, but during the day, in rainy weather, when the grass was wet. Knowing the habits of pikes, I now always cover the tank with fish with thick boards and even press the boards down with bricks so that neither the pikes nor the cats can do anything!
Author - Motalov P
The ability to preserve fish during fishing for a long time, to maintain its attractive appearance and taste, is gained through practice. Often, finding fish and choosing the right bait creates less of a headache than solving the problem of delivering the catch home fresh. Especially when the sun is hot and the heat in a couple of hours can lead to sad consequences.
For a feeder tied directly to one feeding place, it is easier to organize measures to preserve the caught fish over a long period of fishing, even in the heat, than for a spinner or fisherman. The latter cover more than one kilometer during daylight hours.
Of course, the “catch and release” principle has its place, but not everyone is destined to say goodbye to a hard-caught trophy, or even more than one. Everyone wants to show off a seasoned pike or selected perch and grayling. What should I do? How to preserve your catch in the heat? Carrying treasured kilograms in a backpack all day, and then, if you travel for 2 or more days, worry about its safety? I believe that no self-respecting fisherman can calmly withstand this.
As for the species of fish, it will not be a secret that crucian carp, pike, dace and sorog have different shelf life thresholds.
I can confidently answer - no salting of fish no way. You can still fight for the safety of your catch for a day, but no more. Without freezer-type devices, all your work will go to waste.
No matter how they write on the forums that with the help of nettles, kukan, burlap soaked in vinegar and sugar, they achieve the preservation of fish for up to 3 - 4 days - I remain a skeptic. Because only salting will guarantee its safety. And then only for a certain period of time. In the heat, the fish in the container will turn bitter. And in order to somehow delay such consequences, polyethylene or aluminum flasks are placed up to the neck in the river. The current does not allow the water to heat up critically and keeps the temperature relatively constant.
I can’t say the same about lakes and ponds, where without the presence of gushing springs, the water really becomes like fresh milk.
As for salting.
We must gut large fish (pike, perch, bream, grayling over a kilogram), remove the gills, but do not wash them. “Trifles” (dace, sorozhka, perch) are salted without removing the entrails. The hotter it is outside, the stronger the salting. Almost any fish will last for several days in this form. And when you arrive home, if there is a lot of salt, why fight the “smell.”
And now I’ll move directly to the usual situations of a spinning fisherman, when, after setting up a field camp, long trips along the shore begin and the need arises to preserve the fish in the heat for up to 2 days maximum.
The best option would be to keep the fish alive. For stationary fishing with a feeder or from a boat, use a cukan or a cage. Naturally, it is worth excluding the presence of the catch under the scorching rays of the sun, in shallow water and near the surf section of the coast. In the turbidity raised by the waves, the fish quickly dies.
When fishing with a spinning rod, we are not talking about a large number of fish caught. Only trophy catches are taken. And in order not to carry pikes or large perches in my backpack, for example, I make homemade kukans right on the shore from thick fishing line and cut branches. Having planted one or three fish, I go into the water and secure it closer to the bottom. A snag, a convenient stone or a driven stake are some of the fastening devices.
In places frequently visited by vacationers, such “blanks” may disappear. This also happened. Therefore, we have to resort to the classic version.
We kill the fish, gut it, remove the gills, but do not wash the internal cavity. If it is possible to pick nettles, then we “stuff” the fish with nettles. I could be wrong, but the content of organic acids in the plant contributes to the long storage time of the catch.
If there are no nettles (the law of meanness), then the alternative is sedge.
In this form, the catch can be carried for half a day in a backpack without visible complications. However, when stopping, be sure to put it in the shade.
Or, as the best option to preserve the fish, after gutting and manipulating the grass, we wrap it in burlap (I’ve long been accustomed to carrying a potato bag with me) and hide it somewhere on the shore, protected from direct sunlight. Until the moment you return to camp, nothing usually happens to pike, perch, crucian carp or large sop.
When catching quickly perishable fish (tugunka, grayling, lenok), only gutting and salt treatment can save you. I am glad that the fishing takes place in windy sections of rivers with a fairly cool current. The heat is usually not felt here.
The proposed ways to save your catch have been tested many times and you no longer want to come up with something new. By the way, I would like to add that no pressure is used when salting in the field. The resulting brine reduces the time the fish is kept warm. The scales are not removed.
No tail, no scales. Regards, Oleg
When fishing with stationary gear - donks, pickers, feeders - the angler, as a rule, stays in the same feeding place all day or night from dawn to dusk. So, having a capacious fish tank at hand, keeping the fish alive is not particularly difficult. Walking fishing is a different matter, during which the angler (usually a spinning angler) continually moves along the shore. In this case, the fish, planted on the kukan, are hidden in a secluded place in order to pick it up alive at the end of the day on the way home. If for some reason this option does not suit you, the fish will have to be pinned. After this, the fish must be gutted, rubbed with salt inside and out, and each carcass covered with nettle leaves. In hot weather, you should never store fish in a plastic bag; a canvas bag is suitable for this purpose. But let’s start in order and consider the issues of preserving the catch in various conditions.
DURING THE ICE SEASON
During the freeze-up period (usually December-April), the preservation of caught fish has its own characteristics, which every angler should have a clear understanding of. If you fish in the countryside in frosty weather, the catch can be stored in the fresh air, in the entryway or pantry of a village hut.
In my youth, when fishing from ice, more than once it came to funny things. So, one day I hid my catch - five pikes - near the shore in a crack formed as a result of sagging ice, and happily went to the village. It happened on the Volga Nerl on the very last ice. When I returned early in the morning, the spring water lifted the ice and my catch was walled up. I had to borrow an ice pick from local fishermen and cut down the crushed fish. It was certainly a good lesson.
Another time, bream buried in the snow in the garden were torn to pieces by local cats. Moreover, one of them, when he saw me, licked his lips and clearly grinned.
When fishing on the last ice, there are sunny, very warm days when you can sunbathe. The angler sits over the hole all day long, dragging bream and roach, throwing them onto the ice. Little does he know that they also “sunbathe”, which is why they lose their freshness and taste. Isn’t it easier to carve an “aquarium” in the ice and store the catch in it until the end of the day?
FREEZING FISH
The most common way to preserve your catch is to freeze the fish. Currently, the vast majority of fishing bases are equipped with freezers. But here's the thing. During a week of summer fishing, a fisherman froze, say, several kg of fish, and while returning home, it thawed. I had to freeze it again in the home refrigerator. Result: after a couple of weeks the fish lost its taste. And this is not surprising. When repeated freezing occurs, significant structural changes occur in fish carcasses. Such fish is considered a product of questionable quality and freshness. Moreover, it can become a source of food poisoning. That's why you need to know how to freeze your catch correctly.
During slow freezing (temperature - 7-12), large ice crystals form in the muscles of the fish. As they freeze, their size increases and muscle tissue is destroyed. When such fish is defrosted, its meat becomes tough and not tasty enough.
With rapid freezing (temperature - 18-35) and constant low storage temperature, fish meat retains its taste for a long time and when defrosted, the original muscle structure is almost completely restored.
If frozen fish is stored for a long time, its quality in any case deteriorates due to drying of the surface and oxidation of fat. To slow down these undesirable processes, a thin ice shell is created on the surface of the carcasses, which performs a protective function. For this purpose, quick-frozen carcasses are dipped in fresh cold water (3-5 seconds) and then placed in the freezer. With the quick freezing method, fish retains its taste for about six months.
SALTING
A reliable way to preserve fish. The main condition for this is that it must be absolutely fresh, environmentally friendly, no matter whether it has just been caught or has been chilled for some time at a certain temperature, but not higher than 5-6 degrees.
We usually salt fish in three cases:
- when you want to cook fatty lightly salted fish (for example, mackerel);
- when you need to preserve your catch during the warm season;
- in combination with drying and smoking.
There are several ways to salt fish.
Dry salting. Mainly used for small fish. Fish carcasses are rubbed with salt and the gill slits are filled with it. Then the fish is placed in a container, for example, in an enamel bucket, additionally sprinkling each layer with salt, and the top is closed with a lid with a weight (oppression). For an 8-liter bucket, for example, a load of 4-5 kg is enough. The wooden circle is made from hardwood. The circle and a weight such as a small stone boulder are first doused with boiling water.
During the salting process, the fish must be completely covered with brine. Disadvantages: the fish turns out to be strongly salted, highly dehydrated, dense, sometimes with signs of fat oxidation.
Wet Ambassador. Place the prepared fish (without gills and entrails) in a saturated salt solution, preferably iodized, where salting occurs under pressure. This method is good for preparing lightly salted fish (2-4% salt). Such a fish product can be effectively dried or smoked without soaking.
Mixed Ambassador. After dry salting, the fish is poured with a salt solution of the required concentration. With this method, the fish is salted faster, more evenly, and is less dehydrated.
Strong and medium salted fish (12-14% salt) can be stored in the refrigerator for a year, lightly salted fish (7-9% salt) - up to six months. By the way, lightly salted fish is best cooked and stored in the refrigerator at a temperature of 4-7 degrees.
DRYING
Mostly freshwater fish are dried: bream, roach, roach, ram, sabrefish. Unsalted suschik is prepared from the fines.
It is best to dry fish in early spring, late autumn and winter, when there are no flies. Drying is also done in the summer, but at this time additional equipment and operations will be required.
With small fish (bleak, roach, roach, sabrefish, bream) proceed as follows. After thoroughly washing it from mucus and slightly airing it, place it in rows in a spacious enamel bowl, which is first doused with boiling water. Each row is thickly sprinkled with coarse salt at the rate of approximately 150 g per 1 kg of fish. Having laid the last row and covered it with a layer of salt, the container is closed with a wooden circle (preferably birch) and pressed with oppression, the weight of which should be at least 3 kg. The oppression is also doused with boiling water beforehand. Salting lasts 5-6 days, in cold weather up to 10. In summer, try to keep the dishes with fish (usually an enamel bucket) in a cool place.
Sometimes a mixed salting method is used. To do this, pour a 20-25% salt solution into the bottom of the dish in an amount of 20-30% by weight of the fish. The fish are laid in rows, sprinkling each row with salt. By weight of fish, 13-15% of salt is consumed.
The fish removed from the brine is soaked for 1.5-2 hours or washed in running water, and then hung with hooks by the lower jaw on a rope. When the water has drained and the carcasses have dried, they are turned over with the tail up, inserting hooks at the very base of the tail. They dry for about 7-10 days in the breeze, but in the shade.
It is more difficult to dry large fish. It is first cut by removing the entrails and gills and making cuts along the spine from the inside. Then they do the same as in previous cases, except that the fish is not only sprinkled with salt, but also rubbed under the scales, and the mouth and abdominal cavity are stuffed with it. They are kept in brine under heavy oppression for 1.5-2 weeks, until the carcasses become hard. Large fish should be soaked for at least two days, changing the water every three hours. The drying process takes about half a month.
In the summer, after soaking the fish, it should be rinsed in a solution of table vinegar. This is done to prevent blowflies from laying their eggs while the fish is drying. The carcasses are then hung on hooks in a frame wire box covered with gauze and exposed to the breeze in a dark place.
Dried fish matures not only during production, but also during storage. Drying is considered complete if the fish becomes elastic, has a pointed back, amber fat, dense pink-yellow caviar, a specific delicate taste and smell inherent in dried fish. This fact also speaks about the quality of the wither. If, for example, you look at the light of a bream, it seems to shine through, and when you lightly press on the back, traces of fat remain on your fingers.
As you can see, the process of drying fish is not easy. And lovers of long journeys resort to it more often.
Sushchik. In addition to drying, when the fish is preliminarily salted under pressure, there is a method of preparing small fish for future use that is quite rare these days. This is the so-called suschik. In this case, salt is not required.
Small dried fish has been a traditional product for the Russian North in the recent past. The dry fishery was especially widespread in the Olonets, Pskov and Novgorod provinces, where in large and small lakes they caught huge quantities of smelt, perch, ruffe, roach and other fish going for the “dry”. Drying of small fish was carried out on the hearth of a hot Russian stove. Unsalted dried fish was stored for a long time and was primarily used to prepare fish soup. Some fishermen still use this method to prepare fish for future use. The oven is heated hot, after which the gutted and washed fish are laid out in one layer on a hot hearth, after laying dry straw, reeds or a mesh of aluminum wire. The fish is first baked and then dried. When drying smelt, roach and other white fish, the scales are removed.
When fishing for pike from ice, you don’t have to worry about the safety of your catch - trophies quickly freeze in the frosty air. But during fishing in the summer they can deteriorate. This problem becomes especially acute when travel to a reservoir drags on for 2-3 days or more. However, even in this case, there are ways to keep the caught pike intact, avoiding damage. How long to protect pike while fishing in summer and winter in the article below.
For storage medium-sized pike can be used cage. In this case she will stay alive for a while, but it was noted that in cages pike fall asleep faster than in kukans. Available for sale spacious models with a length of 3, 5 and more meters, in which the pike will feel comfortable. The main thing is not to use models made of nylon thread, which the predator tears with sharp teeth.
Since pike fishing involves moving around a body of water in search of fish, the method is not suitable for fishing from the shore. If you are fishing from a boat, you can lift the cage out of the water every time you need to move to a new point. This way you will keep the pike alive.
This method will work as for coastal, So And For boat fishing. In the first case, you need to have several kukans in stock. After catching the trophy, the pike is placed on one of them, the end of the rope is securely fastened to the shore - for example, tied to a tree - and the fish is released into the water. Then you can move on, fishing new areas. The main thing is to remember the points where the fish were left so that you can collect trophies when you move back along the shore.
When fishing from a boat, you can use kukans with shock-absorbing inserts attached to the cords. In this case, you will be able to move around the pond on oars without worrying about the fish being damaged during transportation and quickly falling asleep. This method is inconvenient if you move around a body of water on a motor while fishing - each time before starting it, you will have to remove all the caught trophies from the water. In the case of kukan, this is more difficult than with a cage.
How to store pike when fishing on kukan, read more at.
Many models of modern boats, which are designed specifically for fishing, are equipped with containers with aerators. Their filled with water from the river or lakes, after which put the caught pike inside. Thanks to the operation of the aerator, the fish remain alive for a long time.
If you have such an aquarium, fishing from a boat turns out to be convenient. When the trophies are in the aquarium on board, you can move the motor across the pond at any time. However, such boats are not cheap, and not everyone can afford to buy one of them. But such boats are widely used by professional spinning fishers participating in competitions, according to the regulations of which only live fish are allowed for weighing.
A good way to keep pike in the heat is to use thermal container. It contains several cooling elements - containers that, before going fishing, need to be filled with water and placed in the freezer. This must be done in advance so that the liquid turns into ice.
The container is designed so that it the walls almost do not allow heat to pass through. Coolness is created in the interior space, which lasts for up to a week. The more cooling elements you use, the longer the low temperature lasts.
The method is suitable for boat fishing, since walking with a container along the shore is inconvenient. Large and roomy models, in which you can store a lot of large and medium-sized pike, are not cheap.
You can also salt the pike. This procedure protects fish from spoilage for a long time. First remove the gills and gut the trophies, then rub with salt. After this, the pike can be placed in a canvas bag, the walls of which allow air to pass through. The fish will last longer if you arrange it with nettles so that the carcasses do not touch.
There are many ways to preserve your pike catch during a long warm-weather fishing trip. Using one of them, you will protect your catch from damage and be able to bring it home safe and sound to prepare the dish to your liking.
Making your own kukan in the video below:
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