Smarties Bar & Grill #77

Big fat zero yesterday. They probably are. They can see a net coming

 

A picture of the giant fish tank at Bass pro shops in fort Myers. For those that may not know is a big copper colored fish is a red fish.

Probably a good 12 lb one too.

I could spend literally all day inside Bass pro shops.

 

Success.... Seven mullet.
This time I got smart and took nippers and cut off all of the fins that are the ones that impale you when you go to clean them. So after that business was done, on to scaling and gutting

Going to be eating good tomorrow. Fish are going in the fridge to chill until being cooked.

 

You can catch mullet on a hook but you need light line and a tiny hook like a bluegill hook.

It has been said that mullet will spit out anything hard but eat anything soft. They generally eat plant matter or small plankton but it has also been said that mullet do not kill for a living but they will eat organisms.

They say a small piece of a white rubber worm is enough to get a mullet to bite a hook. Other traditional baits or small pieces of real worm or canned corn.

Typically they are netted which is what I did today.

Who's your daddy? Who brings home the bacon or in this case the chicken of the sea? That's right...FatBack brings home that salty pork.

 

Some sliced onion and lemon. Yum!

 

Fresh caught mullet are the very best and the very worst if they aren't fresh.

 

We had them on the smoker by 10:00 a.m. this morning. And you are right because mullet are said to be a fish that does not keep very well and is much best consumed fresh.

They are a very oily fish, said to taste very much like fish. Some people complain about fishy tasting fish and for those people I wonder why they just don't go eat chicken if they don't like the taste of fish?

 

When I see fresh mullet I don't see the fish itself, I see the fish after I have gutted and scaled it and got rid of anything that isn't meat.

I think of them as little meat suits and my job is to go and get rid of everything that isn't actually meat, though they do have an edible gizzard which is better than chicken gizzards and if I'm not mistaken I do believe that mullet is the only fish that has a gizzard.

It's kind of a bit chewy if you put it on the smoker, which I do take every fish's body and stuff the gizzard back in before cooking. ( After having cleaned them out thoroughly from all of these semi-digested food matter.... Basically one step away from feces )

The traditional way is to bread and deep fry them just like chicken gizzards. Maybe if I catch another mess of them I'll try it that way ?

Has anyone else ever noticed how large the eyes of a mullet are? No wonder they can see that net coming

 

Do you trim the gizzard first? We always trim the gizzard and then fry it.
There is a talent to netting mullet and knowing when to cast the net.

 

I just take it out when I gut them. Next time I will slice them up the middle so as to get everything out of them.

I really should have been netting between October and December when the fall row is on.

 

The Hummingbirds are back. Time for hours of acrobatics and entertainment. Ain't got no pics yet. The little guys are very fast.

 

So far this week the rain gauge shows 5 inches of rain. We are supposed to get more rain today and some wind.

 

Here in DeSoto county we are basically in a drought.

There's a private neighborhood of dirt roads just down the street where a lot of my friends live.

I have to be extra cautious riding my on off road street legal dirt bike there due to all the sugar Sand. Makes it very interesting to ride.

But then again if you were going to ride a bike off-road in Florida, you had better know how to ride sugar Sand and mud.

 

It has been wet here. Even sunny days have wet grass almost all day. My tomatoes are looking good and I have other stuff coming along. Two varieties of tomato... Celebrity and Better Bush. The only thing not so hot are the bell peppers.

 

We had about an inch and a half, I emptied then mid week it was 5 1/4 and it has been raining this evening and is supposed to all weekend. Def a wet week. Just hope this isn't one of those rainy til June and not a drop until after Labor Day years.

 

We had a really bad rain storm last night and the tornado warnings were going off on the phone. We didn't get one here but there were places that may have got a touch down. This morning has started off with more thunder and rain. Going to be rainy again today.

 

We got 1 1/4 last night per my rain gauge but nothing severe as far as wind, etc. Looks like it may rain some more today. Tornadoes don't really fret me that much. The ones around here tend to be weak short-lived rain-wrapped ones and always end up passing in 1 of 2 places not especially close to me. The damage is pretty much always from falling trees, not the wind itself. Microbusts are more common around here and can be intense all on their own. I do experience those periodically but being toward the east end of the street with storms usually coming from the west, my house proper is well-shielded. It can get gnarly out in the street/yard though. Last time we had one I ended up with about 10 wheelie trash bins and a whole bunch of my neighbors' loose debris in the street in front of me or on my property. I just gathered it all up and sat it by the road and let people come get their stuff if they wanted it. I still have several plastic flower pots nobody claimed.

 

We have a lot of limbs down which is normal when we get storms. Pecan trees are known for dropping limbs when the wind is blowing.
Most of our storms come out of the west, we do get them from the east occasionally. When Texas has bad weather it is a warning we may get bad weather.

 

My pecan trees drop limbs because it is either sunny or dark outside. Constantly picking up sticks before I mow under them.

 

Look at these dumb ass kids. Jumping into the fish tank at the Bass pro shop in fort Myers pictured above.