Why I fish to eat with tenkara

Calories make for a good return on the investment of the weight carried, and the expansion of possibilities for your activity/recovery time is a great asset as well.  Solid points. 👍

Also, it’s nice to see such a clear chart, showing how protein-deficient most backpacking diets can be if not attended-to.  I personally shoot for a bit more protein than that, but that’s because I often end up below my daily protein targets on account of an extra-high fiber intake.

I need to pick up a basic rod for those trips that are not dedicated to fishing…and I’m not very good at fishing in the first place, so by that logic it shouldn’t matter what I get!  In my skillful hands, a tenkara rod will fail to catch as many fish as a much heavier rig. 🤣

When I started backpacking in the Sierra, more than fifty years ago, I didn’t bring a stove and did all my cooking over a fire.  I didn’t bring dinner entrees, but caught fish and ate them with Uncle Ben’s Instant Rice and a few Knor’sd instant sauces: Stroganoff, Goulash, Amadine, etc.

Times have changed in the intervening fifty years. Sure, catching a 16 inch trout for dinner might still be possible, but my experience is that you are more likely to catch 6-8 inch trout in the Sierra, especially if you are in the high country. I still take my fishing gear–A total of a little over a pound of fly rod, reel, and a few flies. But I don’t keep fish any more, because I keep hoping that they will make a comeback from the pressure they get. And I sure don’t count on catching larger fish for my dinner.

At least in the High Sierra, those days are pretty much over.

Ryan,

What are the items in your fishing kit that total 3oz?

How do you cook them?

I added a brief gear list to the end of the article. Basically, just the rod, line, some tippet, a DCF pouch, license, and flies – the is the minimalist side of my kit when I just need a kit for utilitarian food catching. I’ll add more if fishing will be my focus.

I usually cut the trout into a few chunks, poach it in my cook pot (usually a Vargo Bot 700), drain the water, remove the bones, mix with spices, roll in a tortilla for a fish taco.

In the 1970s my dad and I would rely on trout for our meals on trips “out west”. I have wonderful memories of us spending extra days at Adelaide Lake in the Bighorns because the fish were so plentiful and nearly jumped out of the lake into our frying pan.

I stopped fishing a while ago, but several of the people I do trips with still fish.  It seems to me that they are frequently doing catch and release because what they are catching are not big enough to be worth eating.

I wonder if the average size of the fish is dropping or I am just going places that are over fished.

I have basically stopped fishing for the past few years because I wasn’t enjoying it as much and so I didn’t want to carry the gear. However, in that time, I’ve never stopped making notes about obscure off-trail lakes with fish, and it might be fun to do some trips where I fish those lakes. It’s shocking how many isolated unnamed lakes were stocked from the air decades ago.

I might just bring light spinning gear, since I often find that to be equally (or more) effective at alpine lake destinations.

I don’t understand the comment about protein weight, since you get the same amount of kcal from a gram of protein as you do from a gram of carbs?

Personally, I don’t find that packing sufficient protein is too much of a challenge. I try to avoid carb-rich foods like rice, cous cous, breads etc. on the trail, in preference of foods with more fat. I use nuts, almonds and peanuts as a baseline food to plan from, realizing that most deviations from that means higher pack weight. Incidentally, that also makes for a protein rich diet (and delicious foods that don’t need cooking).

On a high excertion trip, I (an 85kg/187lbs male) would need around 4,000kcal and 150g protein per day. 640g of peanuts provides around 4,000kcal and 180g of protein. Call it 750g/day, and there’s plenty of room for variation.

Of course if you deliberately pack fewer calories than needed, it might get harder, especially if you pack carb rich foods (which seems weirdly common among people chasing grams).

Anyways, that’s not to knock the idea of fresh fish as both a good source of nutrients, saved weight and morale boosts.

I don’t understand the comment about protein weight, since you get the same amount of kcal from a gram of protein as you do from a gram of carbs?

It’s lighter to carry dehydrated carbs than most protein sources. Rice and ramen are tantalizingly lightweight, especially for longer carries. Unless you can live on protein powder, carrying protein will always be heavier.

The other side of this is that rice and ramen have scant nutrition beyond the calories, while proteins are the nutrients that your body needs in largest quantities throughout the day. Trout and salmon are especially high in EPA and DHA, which are essential and otherwise difficult to carry (other than canned fatty fish like sardines or capsules).

TLDR: Fish are nutritious and delicious, if you like fishing and you travel where large-enough fish can be caught. For enthusiasts, fishing could be the reason to backpack to remote places.

It’s lighter to carry dehydrated carbs than most protein sources. Rice and ramen are tantalizingly lightweight, especially for longer carries. Unless you can live on protein powder, carrying protein will always be heavier.

It might be true that, compared with ‘pure’ carbs like rice and ramen, foods that are very high in protein often holds more water (and so is heavier). If those are your options, that explains the claim that protein is heavy.

But it’s a misconception that rice and ramen are lightweight foods. Ramen is ~350kcal/100g. Nuts, seeds, peanuts, almonds are 550+ kcal/100g. For 4000kcal/day you can take <750g of mixed seeds and nuts or >1,100g of ramen. On a site where people will cut their toothbrush in half to save <10g, that’s an absolutely insane weight savings. I know noone(?) is eating only ramen or rice, so real world savings are less than that, but easily in the 1kg/week range. Ultralight food is high fat, low carb.

Again, I’m in no way trying to knock the general idea of the article – a fish you catch is lighter than anything you bring, it is healthy and a great meal. It’s just that some of the statements in the first few paragraphs make what seems like really weird claims to me:

Carbs and fats are pretty efficient in terms of both calorie-to-weight and calorie-to-volume ratios: cous cous, rice, tortillas, chocolate, chips, nuts, oil, etc.

Carbs are demonstrably bad in calorie-to-weight with an ideal maximum of 400kcal/100g (~350 for rice etc). Contrast that to the second half of the list – chocolate/chips/nuts (~550), oil (850+). Nuts aren’t as high in protein as say jerky, but if they’re a main source of energy (instead of say rice), it seems unlikely you should be struggling to get enough protein.

In my week long backcountry fishing trip this year (bushwacking, lake finding) I caught a ton but didn’t eat any.  You have to clean it not far from camp to keep it fresh and that attracts bears and critters, and the knife and something to cook it in or store the pot in aren’t weightless.   Just using the pot to boil water means it can stay out of the bear bag.  Cooking fish in the pot means a bigger, heavier Ursack.

I respect the attraction, but its more emotional than logical.

High calorie density and high quality protein is easy to incorporate

• Nido 143 kcal/oz with 8g protein
• Parmesan 111kcal/oz, 9 g protein
• Jerky and salami starts to drop off due to water content ~ 90-100kcal/oz. 10-12g protein
• Dehydrated pea flakes ~ 105kcal/oz and 7g of lower quality protein
• Nuts ~160-180kcal/oz and 5-7g of lower quality protein

If I need more protein, I add easy to consume bumps:

• Pure Protein bar 108kcal/oz, 20g protein
• TVP 100kcal/oz and 15g protein.  After day 4, this becomes my main source of protein along with Nido and protein bars

From an Alaskan perspective, of course you eat it.  “Catch & Release” = “Playing with your food.”

In the Sierra, my concern for 97.3% of backpackers is that they don’t get far enough out where the dumb naive fish are.  So they can’t rely on catching fish and need to bring all their food along.  A really skilled fisherman?  That’s a different story.  The guy I co-led 9-day trips with could think like a fish and even along a major trail would come back happy from a afternoon of fishing.  “Did you catch any Ron?” someone would ask.  “Yeah.”  “Very many?”  “Some.”  “How many, like a number?!?”  “About 60.”  One trip, he specifically planned up Goddard Canyon because he’d seen 19-21″ trout in Lake Martha up at 11,000 feet (only ice-free 2 months a year) without his gear.  He only kept one, figuring they might be older than he was, and it had been feeding on krill so had reddish flesh like a salmon.

Manfred & Sons® on their Brooks Range trip had a problem with fishing.  Yeah, there were fish on the first cast and all of that, but the fish were too big.  When two of three guys eat fish, you want a few 1-pound or a single 3-pound fish.  Not a 20-30 pound sheefish.  (random AK F&G photo):

Several friends have done it since, but the first people I met who sea kayaked from Homer to Seward along the Gulf of Alaska coast also had a fishing problem (which I wouldn’t have seen a problem).  They wanted to catch halibut but couldn’t get their hooks past all the pelagic rockfish (the black ones below).  IMO, a 2-3 pound rockfish is ideal for catching in a kayak.

I don’t want a 20-30-40 pound halibut in a small boat.  That’s why I’ve only use 15-pound test line.  One time in Baja, my line snapped so fast, I could only imagine what grabbed it.

On my July trip’s best day I caught 38 bass in 2 hours, the smallest being ~ 1 lb, average ~ 3lbs, largest ~ 7lbs. Pretty good day for out here.  I’d still be chowing down if I ate them.

Then I snapped my rod in half while hauling a cow over a weed bed, solving the “too big fish” problem! Temporarily though, I fixed it with the superglue in my med kit for cuts. Multi-use for the win!

When dad and I fished Lake Erie or Lake St. Clair for walleye, we looked for that momma bear slot size. Anything too big was considered potentially radioactive or a living thermometer.

A few years back I caught two conservatively guessed ~ 10+lb Pike from my kayak (that’s a 9″ plug), that was a hoot. I don’t carry a net, and prefer a lipper which makes landing them interesting but is easier on the fish

Anyone have favorite ways to eat 6″ brookies?

Anyone have favorite ways to eat 6″ brookies?

Those are snack-sized, but: pan-fried in butter rarely fails.  On the very rare occasions that I actually plan on catching an edible fish, a small squeeze container of ghee is a nice way to do it.

Two scenarios. I carry enough food, catch fish, and bring food home. Or… I plan on catching fish and get skunked and go home hungry.

I LOVE catching, like fishing and eating fish.   I do not like fish bones.   When I do catch a fish, it is usually small, any advice for dealing with fish bones?   Especially the little bones.

Depends on the species.  Trout are easy to filet–cook them lightly, the slice down either side of the spine and peel the flesh away from the ribs. Other fish can be more complicated.

Of course, you’ll want to clean them first!

If the bones are very small and ultra fine and the heat high enough, they melt during the cook

If there is risk of toxin (large fish, location dependent), try to avoid eating the belly fat