During summer fishing trips to Canada in the 1990s, my wife never assumed we would catch enough before noon to feed our three daughters shore-lunch on the nearest island.
So, we never left the cabin without hotdogs in our cooler.
“Just in case,” Penny explained.
Realize, too, that we aren’t snobby about which fish we eat. Although our girls fought over walleye cheeks, we never held out for “walters.” For shore lunch, we regularly pan-fried northern pike and smallmouth bass on the old two-burner Coleman stove.
In fact, we sometimes dodged a hotdog lunch by fishing a leech or nightcrawler beneath our slip-bobbers to catch last-minute smallmouths from island shorelines. I’d sigh with relief, dig out the fillet knife and fish-cleaning board, and fillet whatever the girls caught. Penny then coated the fillets in Shore Lunch batter, poured vegetable oil into the pan, and hollered when to stop fishing and start eating.
Bullheads played a similar role during my youth. When things looked bleak while fishing from Spring Harbor’s dead-end road on Madison’s Lake Mendota, I brought home bullheads to impress my parents and grandmother. They were further pleased when I didn’t need their help skinning and cleaning these tasty, homely fish.
Since then, however, smallmouths became the old reliables when fishing in Canada, northern Wisconsin, Mendota or the Chippewa River. Even better, smallmouths are easier to fillet and skin than bullheads.
We even proselytize to friends, urging them to eat smallmouths. If you eat smallies the day they’re caught, it’s hard to distinguish them from walleyes. We don’t expect anyone to take our word for it, of course. We assume they’ll think we’re exaggerating without fear of a fact-check or taste-test.
Like it or not, most people consider smallmouths a fish of last resort; something they eat only when exhausting all other menu options. Even then, they’ll cling to false assumptions about eating smallmouth bass, such as:
-- “I hear they’re OK if you throw them in the smoker.”
-- “I hear they’re very greasy and, depending on the season, have worms in their meat.”
-- “I kept one while camping in the backcountry when we ran low on food. I filleted and breaded it, and then realized we forgot the oil, so we just threw the fillets in the pan. It actually turned out pretty good.”
-- “We cooked some smallies with flour and lemon-pepper for a shore lunch years ago. As I recall, they were a little oily, but not bad.”
-- “Haven’t eaten one in over 15 years. For some reason, it just seems wrong to eat smallmouths.”
-- “I couldn’t eat one. It would be like eating (fisher)man’s best friend.”
-- “I’ve never eaten a smallmouth, and I don’t know anyone who has. It’s not because we don’t think you should eat bass. We just have tastier fish where I live, like walleyes, trout, salmon and walleyes. But if you want to eat them and it’s legal, I won’t stop you.”
Other folks blame this aversion on a widespread, deep-seated catch-and-release philosophy among bass anglers. A recent Department of Natural Resources study on the waters around Green Bay and Door County estimated that anglers release 90% of smallmouths they catch.
Even when the DNR removes minimum-length rules and encourages people to keep largemouths and smallmouths, few anglers take either home. On the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage in Iron County, for example, anglers must release 14- to 18-inch largemouths and smallmouths, but can keep one longer than 18 inches and those shorter than 14 inches, up to five total. As the DNR notes, this slot protection “encourages the harvest of smaller fish, with the intent of improving the population’s size structure.”
Still, most anglers show smallies no frying-pan love. While fishing with our friend Jeff Robl last week on the Turtle-Flambeau, Penny and I encouraged him to eat one of the smaller smallies he caught. He expressed polite doubts, and shared his dad’s standard for eating fish: “I like fish that don’t taste like fish.”
As the morning played out with no walleyes, we sensed Robl softening his stance. But then we caught six walleyes during the noon hour and all that foolishness about eating smallmouths ceased.
Imagine our surprise a few days later when Robl sent a text message about fixing a shore-lunch dinner for a family he was guiding. His note read: “I haven’t made smallmouth in a long time. I kept the fillets separate. I was really skeptical about how good you guys said they were. We tried them in a side-by-side comparison with walleyes. We had a hard time deciphering a difference in taste. When we added my tartar sauce, I couldn’t taste any difference.”
Robl isn’t the first friend/fishing guide we’ve convinced. When fishing in September 2022 on Idaho’s Lake Cascade with Chris Weber, a Wisconsin transplant who guides for jumbo perch, we often hooked and fought smallmouths. In fact, we often groaned in disappointment when these hard-fighting fish repeatedly vaulted into the air and peeled line from our spinning reels.
Like Robl, Weber and his wife, Jessie, politely doubted my claims and Penny’s assurances that fresh smallmouths taste fine. Still, they agreed to keep a couple and prepare them with some perch for dinner, and they liked the taste. In fact, sometime later I noticed smallmouths in pictures of the fish-cleaning table as Weber filleted perch with his BUBBA electric knife.
All that said, we concede this shortcoming: Once frozen and thawed weeks or months later, smallmouth fillets failed the Robl test: They tasted like fish.
Robl suggested soaking the fillets overnight in milk before cooking them. Another friend suggested frying them in the pan with onions.
We haven’t tested either idea yet. After all, we usually have a stash of venison hotdogs for Plan B menus.
Patrick Durkin prepares to fillet a smallmouth bass for lunch. — Patrick Durkin photo
I once tried to release a nice SMB I caught on Lake Namakagon. My wife and mother-in-law stared at me as if I was stealing food from their plate. I eat 'em but prefer something else. Missouri girls are not as fussy, so I learned on that day.