A few years ago, I joined a high school friend for a daylong paddle from Hidden Falls in St. Paul to Mississippi River Lock and Dam No. 2 in Hastings. Frank carried the maps, the camera, the chia seeds preserved in sugar water. I brought lunch.
After four hours of negotiating the Big Muddy past rusting hulks of abandoned industry, the two-toned confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers at Pike Island, a heron rookery, and a rope swing, we consulted our maps, which guided us to a camping spot about 30 feet above the river. A fire ring in a sandy clearing and a picnic table gouged with teenage hieroglyphs would serve as my kitchen.
Considering that we were reliving our formative years along the upper Mississippi in Winona, our Mark Twain game was strong. I had made the decision to play that up the previous evening when I packed two fresh catfish fillets on ice, seasoned cornmeal, condiments, and a couple of hoagie buns in my neoprene cooler. When we beached for refueling, I grabbed the aforementioned and an armful of other necessities that I had squirreled away in my dry bag: a cast-iron skillet, two fingers of rendered bacon fat, and my trusty fish spatula. The bacon fat was soon shimmering slick in the skillet, and the loaves had been split and toasted. I rubbed the catfish in hot sauce and dredged them in a gritty golden coating ready to transform the catfish into our nourishing North Country freshwater birthright—the shore lunch.
From Door County to Thunder Bay, Red Lake, and beyond, it seems the agreed-upon requisites for a classic shore lunch are fresh fish, the breading of one’s choice, and hot grease in a skillet. Most midwestern anglers will recall an older relative reaching into a creel and producing a baby food jar of bacon drippings and a ziplock bag of breading—usually seasoned flour augmented by crushed saltines or corn flakes (or both). Strips of trout, walleye, sunfish, or perch—filleted in a trice on a canoe paddle with a few passes of a surgically sharp boning knife—are dropped in the bag of breading with instructions to “Shake it, don’t break it!” A cooler is cracked to a cornucopia of orange sodas and lawn mower beers, and the rite of passage begins.
Some shore lunches I’ve been party to have included potatoes added to the frying fillets, while others involved Wonder Bread and sliced onions or toasted white corn tortillas and a bottle of hot sauce. Or, as Frank and I devoured on a sandbar bend in our beloved Mississippi River, something resembling the po’boys made famous more than 1,000 miles downriver.
It’s easy to forget that our Twin Cities and greater Minnesota are a giant freshwater amusement park—albeit devoid of neon and the pulsating beat of stadium techno music. The thrills of the Midway we all have a right to savor are as simple as waves or a current with a paddle in our hands. Admission is free. The food court is just over there, near the firepit on the beach. The menu is whatever you brought in your cooler to go with what’s hooked on the end of your line.
Go Do It
1. Most markets have fish breading stacked like cordwood, or there’s the proprietary family-secret mix scrawled in Grandma’s careful hand on a greasy index card. Put two heaping cups in a one-gallon, heavy-duty resealable freezer bag.
2. Seal a few frozen fillets in a baggie, and keep them in the cooler next to the pops and beers—if you come up empty, you’ll still have lunch.
3. Though it may be anathema to North Country sensibilities, a few drops of hot sauce—I recommend Cry Baby Craig’s—and a squeeze of lemon take shore lunch to the next level. Just make sure Grandpa cleans the knife he used to gut the fish before he slices the lemon wedges.
June 21, 2021 at 07:00AM
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Big Fish - Mpls.St.Paul Magazine
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