The best ways to cook pan fry trout in camp.

The majority of fishermen will bring cornmeal and flour, butter, potatoes and onions when going on a fishing trip, and the reason for these ingredients is for frying up a few good batches of pan fry trout, especially when the trout species is speckled trout.  Other than smoking the fish, speckled trout will always taste best when it is cooked right out of the water.  There are some things in life that just have to be won, and a speckled trout dinner is one of them, as it is illegal to sell wild speckled trout, either in a store or a restaurant, in Canada.

When cooking pan fry speckled trout, you start with catching three or four 1/2 to 2/3 -pound speckled trout, and keep them alive, either using a stringer or a boat's live well, until you return to camp.  Once at camp, clean and wash, then fillet the trout immediately.  Pat the fish with a paper towel, and roll the fillets in a mixture of 2/3's white flour and 1/3 cornmeal, well mixed.

Using the hottest coals from your fire, scoop them into a side pit, where a grille, gridle or pan can be laid level to the ground.  Drop a healthy tablespoon of butter onto the grille once it is good and hot, and immediately drop the coated fillets onto the cooking butter.  Add more coals as they become available from the campfire.

At the same time, fry sliced potatoes and onions in a frying pan with butter and seasoned to taste, on a separate grille.  When the trout starts to turn white, turn it.  The fish is cooked when the meat is fully white and flaky, and will probably just fall off of the bone.

You can also cook pan trout on a stick in camp.  Make a small fire, and gut and clean the fish, cleaning the carcass with water afterward, leaving the head on.  Thread a thin, green (fresh off of a tree) stick through the mouth of the trout, so that the stick can be stuck in the ground, in the middle of the fire, with the trout standing head-up.  It will be cooked when the skin starts to fall off of the meat.

And yet another great way of cooking pan trout in camp is to dig a small hole in the ground by the campfire.  Gut and clean the fish, then fillet.  Wrap in tin foil, with seasonings and some butter.  When you have a good amount of white-hot coals, dump them into the small hole, on top of the wrapped fish.  When the coals are blackened, the fish should be cooked.

Fish on!  And, enjoy those pan fry trout at camp.