I am a little different than most of the people in my home state of Minnesota. While most people rave about catching and eating walleye, I’m not nearly as infatuated with our state fish. Walleye are indeed good to eat and can be fun to catch, but I am a much bigger fan of catching pike. And when it comes to eating, I prefer the smaller and tastier yellow perch.
Granted, I’m a little biased. My love of eating perch stems from childhood summers spent on Leech Lake, where I learned to fish off my grandparents’ dock. I would either steal all my grandfather’s night crawlers, or go dig worms in the woods. Then I would head down to the dock and drop a plain hook with a chunk of worm on it under the boat lift, and catch perch until I had filled a stringer with them. During the spring, just before the ice would go out on the lake, I would take a small chunk of bacon, place it on a small jig, and proceed to fill 5-gallon buckets full of perch. So it’s no exaggeration to say that I have caught and eaten thousands of perch.
The majority of those perch were dredged in a cracker-crumb breading and fried, then served on a piece of Wonder Bread with Hellman’s Tartar sauce. I have eaten and enjoyed them many other ways, but fried with some white bread might still be my favorite. But I can’t indulge in that classic overtime there are…
