Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to celebrate the successful first trout harvest the little man and I did!

Cleaning Our First Trout

Fish is one of the most popular foods throughout the world, and trout is definitely one of the most popular fresh water species of fish that people eat. We've been trying to accomplish this for a really long time, and we finally pulled it off the other day!

The little man and I have been getting back into the fishing season in a pretty fun way - by doing little fishing derby's for kids! It's great because I never got to do these things as a kid and they are a lot of fun, plus it teaches them a lot of good things in life like competition as long as it doesn't get too intense. The other nice thing about it was that we actually got to catch a trout finally! We've been trying for a few years to get one!

The tournament that we entered had stocked the little pond they had with a bunch of trout and held it for the kids. We didn't end up winning anything but it was good that we actually nagged a trout, one of the milestones I've been trying to accomplish with the little man for too long! We've caught most of the fresh water species of fish except for these things, but one thing we've never done is kept one of the fish that we caught!

The little man has been into survival type videos for years, he's really liked the Outdoor Boys, Adventure Agents and a few others that have really wholesome, family content for the survival situations. One of the things all of these shows do is catch fish, keep it and eat them! Catch and cook is what they title most of these videos and the little man has been really anxious to catch something that we can keep.

The important thing that we were missing was the right gear. Namely, something to keep the fish on! I got ourselves a few things set up; a bucket to keep it all in, a "stringer" they're called, where you loop it through the gills and into the mouth so that you can put the fish back into the water and keep it fresh, a cutting board and a fish carving knife. We took a trip to Wallymart and got the stuff ready before the adventure, and thankfully we did because we got something we needed to keep!

The sort of sad part about it is that the fish didn't survive, but that was namely because the people at the derby were SUPER SLOW and didn't record our darn fish for too long so it was stuck out in the air without a way to breathe so it eventually died.

Since it died, we figured it only makes sense to keep the thing! We were trying to find someone that wanted to keep it themselves but we were in kind of a rich area, and the people at the derby didn't look like they were "fish" people, most of them went with their kids just as something to do like the poor folk if I'm honest lol. They were nice enough but it was a little awkward with them dressed in loafers and expensive clothes, trying to pretend they are fishing with their kids lol.

We didn't find anyone to keep the fish, so we were certainly stuck with it now. We made sure to keep it in the water so that it was fresh until we got to our destination: the lake house! It was a pretty good setting to do it in because the place we went to was where people really do catch and eat the things they are catching lol so it felt right.

I haven't cleaned a fish in soooooo long! I did it a few times with my dad but damn was I way younger than now, it's gotta be 15 years or more since I cleaned a fish! I wanted to do it myself, with my little buddy, so that I could re-learn how to do it! I know that we did a few things wrong which is fine, considering it's my sons first time and my first time in a really long time but it was a great learning experience.

I took it also as an opportunity to show him and explain things about the fish. We saw the heart, the liver, the float gland, the intestines and the poop. We also saw that the fish had the bait we caught it with still in it's stomach, very partially digested. It was overall a really good time because he was very into it, learning what to do and what not to do. I was trying my best to guide him in the right direction while also learning myself. I know that we've got a long way to go before we get up to hunting deer but this was a great first step at cleaning something we actually caught!

We didn't get to eat the fish yet because we don't have a grill and my wife WILL NOT let us cook it in the house hahaha she hates the smell of fish which I don't necessarily blame her. So we've got it waiting in the freezer for when the camp officially opens up and we get the grill going again!

^-CmplXty. _{Real human written content, never AI. All pictures are mine unless otherwise stated}

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