Johnsfolly

Thanks Daryk. Good luck with your boat in 2018. I look forward to fishing with a few more OAF folks this next year! Also hopefully get you on some darters this spring !

The girth on that fish may equal or surpass its length☺! Very nice and congrats in a great fish!

We had brown sugar glazed ham with green beans with brown butter and almonds and au gratin potatoes. Ni pictures. Also a nice local whit wine. Merry Christmas everyone! Hope to see new recipes in the New year.

They look great! I can smell them from here☺!

One of the joys of Christmas is the cookies we leave out for Santa. Coconut macroons with 60% cocoa dark chocolate ganache. (yes we are a Santa household!)

We had a similar cooking experience yesterday. My Betterhalf started with chicken legs in our dutch oven and browned the chicken, added water and cooked until cooked through. She removed the chicken and let cool. She then added onion, carrot, and celery into the "stock". Once the vegetables were tender, she blended them with an immersion blender. I cut up a buttercup squash, garlic, and some celery (including some of the inner leaves). I cooked the squash, garlic, and celery in a skillet to get a little color on the squash and start them cooking. We pulled the chicken from the bones and added the squash, celery, and chicken back into the soup base. I added some prepared chicken stock and seasoned the soup. Back in the skillet I added a little butter and cooked a rice and quinoa mixture. Once browned I added some water and a little chicken stock to the rice and boiled it for about 10 minutes. I added the rice to the soup. Cooked the soup until the squash and rice were cooked through.

For a whole semester while I took classes there. It was a challenge. The dorm was split into separate halls radiating from a central common area. Many of the women were synched based upon the hall she lived if you know what I mean. Was like walking on egg shells most of the time. Definitely not the living conditions like you would see in those frat boy movies.

No snow here. Maybe this evening or tomorrow morning.

He is champing at the bit. Now if we could just teach him to fetch☺!

Definitely one of my favorite if not the favorite Christmas video. Thanks BH!

That's a great bunch of smiles and a mess of crappie! I'm sure that they all had a great time fishing.

Very nice mixed species trip. Congrats on a few nice fish!

Ham - congrats on the walleye! Sorry that your season is likely over for the year. As with all fishing endeavors there is always the next bend in the river, another part of the lake, the next trip, and always next year. I hope that you and your family have a great holiday and you have good fishing in 2018!

Happy Holidays to everyone on OAF from the Folly Family. We hope that all is well with each of you that visit this forum! Here at the Folly Farm and Menagerie we are preparing for the holidays. We have our tortoise hitched to his sleigh with hopes that he will be able to help Santa pull his sleigh this Christmas Eve!

Good luck. I'm trying to convince my wife to let me head down that way this weekend. I may not go as far downstream as to where I believe you are headed.

A sculpin killer!?! I'm glad that he got that bad fish out of the population! Leaves more sculpins for us microfishers!

I never questioned whether she was better looking than me. That's why I was dating her then and married to her now . She was a little sister in my fraternity.

Ok - no fancypants scanner, so took photo instead ! Sorry JohnP we have hijacked your thread. I Blame Marty ! No - she was not one of my students. We went to different colleges except for the one semester that I took classes at her school and stayed in her dorm at an all girl college. That's a separate story.

I'd give that a double DANG!! That looks fantastic!

Looks like that trout has been hanging around the cleaning station. What a pig! It's not a trophy since it's only 18", but a real nice rainbow!

I do find that it is hard to work them into an entrée. So I typically just use them for starters ! been running around doing the Xmas shopping, light viewing, etc. So not much homemade dishes lately. For one the more memorable "prepared" dishes, I did brown some diced chicken breast and onions then used Patak's Jalfrezi curry simmering sauce. Served with rice. Turned out to be a decent meal.

This is a pretty typical size. In graduate school as part of our lake research we were able to fish a private lake that does not allow fishing. We were catching perch up to 17" in length (I have actual photos, but not digital photos ). They fought like smallmouth bass. It was awesome, but I got to weigh, measure, and pump the gut contents of each fish that we caught as part of our research. My betterhalf got a lot more enjoyment catching these fish than I did since as soon as I was done processing one fish she had another for me .

No. Haven't fished any water that has yellow perch in Missouri or Arkansas. Yes. I caught several in Maryland this spring/summer. They were all stream fish and not very large.

I enjoy fish in a variety of ways. I agree that white bass are a stronger tasting fish than crappie and at times like to cook them to accent that flavor. Maybe baked with S&P, lemon, and dill. I also like to lightly coat a variety of fish fillets with ranch dressing and then bake the fillets. We also love fried fish and the spice and bread crumb/parmesan mixture that I prepare would make boot leather taste good .

Now you are just encouraging him ! I'll take a minute to congratulate you on your decent day of fishing. That's a bunch of nice crappie and pretty cool about catching the yellow perch. Congrats!