We ate our first frozen lake trout tonight and the reviews are mixed.
This lake trout came from Quesnel Lake. We had to freeze it whole to bring it home according to the BC Fishing Regulations.
Once the fish was thawed, I filleted it and noticed right away that the flesh did not seem as firm as when it was fresh. The filleting was easy, but skinning and removing the pin bones was more difficult compared to the few lake trout we have eaten fresh from the lakes we fished. I always remove pin bones with tweezers and each bone I removed brought with it a flake of flesh. The top half of the fish felt mushy and flaked out. Skinning proved difficult and it took a few tries on each fillet to get the skin to start peeling off. At times, it felt like it was trying to skin a deer with a sharp skinning knife and was being careful not to knick the hide.
We used corn flake crumbs as the coating. Dipping each piece in egg and then the crumbs coated each piece nicely.
Our concern with this size of lake trout was if this fish would taste “fishy.” Our last lake trout that measured 26 inches tasted fishy to us, because we like to eat our fish fresh and plainer than most ( I love salt, but my heart does not). Certain parts of the fish tasted fishy and others did not. The fish fed us all well, but due to our preferences we will most likely only keep the smaller 18 to 20 inch lakers for a while. And, we might only eat them fresh from the lake now too.
Does anyone have any tips on how to store/freeze lake trout? Any recipes or ways to prepare lake trout that have been frozen?