Steaming Trout in a Dutch Oven over Campfire
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After a very long day and 10+ mile hike with 3000' of vertical gain up (and down)—a very long slog—I enjoy the fruits (fauna) of my fishing labor. From a lake apparently hardly ever touched by fishing, where rainbow trout are aggressive feeders. That makes two lakes now (the other with Golden Trout) that are apparently never or hardly ever fished.
While I prefer trout fried with almonds, frying is a tedious job requiring constant attention (and a clean up job of a greasy pan, awkward without water nearby). With a dutch oven (aluminum hard anodized for travel, lower weight) @AMAZON and a wooden Japanese style steamer inside, the job is clean and neat with no grease—just kick back and check for done-ness in about 20 minutes, depending on size of fish (11-14 inches in this case). A sweet potato at the same time is good also.
A few days prior, this huge (for the elevation) Golden Trout is a feast for the eyes. It has a companion that is even larger—probably a record for the very high elevation. I often fish with a de-barbed hook, which means I don’t land some fish, but it tests my skill (I am generally “deadly” from experience gained as a teenager).
Trout are good cold too. If properly gutted, they can be cooked with their own roe in place, though the quality of the roe ranged from pretty good to not so good. Curiously, one of the rainbows I caught another day had orange flesh and the others white flesh, even though all were rainbows. Perhaps there was some hybridization with Golden Trout in the gene pool in the past, with the rainbow displacing the Goldent Trout (I speak of trout from different bodies of water). The rainbow trout with the orange flesh was best of all, and tasted most like Coho salmon.