Best way to make Northern

[redneck]

Just wanted to see everyones recipes for northern. Being from the Shawano Area before this, I caught alot of snakes."Shawano Lake Speicals",I just pickled them.Since We moved been catching a bigger class of fish. Hate to just pickle them.

Redneck

[water_wolf]

N. Pike is, in my opinion, one of the tastiest of all fresh water fish.
You can fry them with either a beer batter mix or with crushed crackers.
One of my favorite ways is:
3 bowls, one with beaten eggs & milk , one with pancake mix and one with crushed bran flake cereal (put thru a blender to crush small)
roll the fillets in the pancake mix, then roll into the egg/milk, then roll in the bran cereal.  Next fry in  skillet with aprox 1/2 - 3/4" of oil untill browned on both sides.  The bran cereal is dynamite as a breading.

You can use this same method substituting the bran cereal with: Saltine crackers, Ritz crackers, Club crackers, Italian bread crumbs, Regular breadcrumbs or you can buy a Shore Lunch mix at some stores.

Bon Apetite!

[trapdaddy21]

some people like to broil or bake northerns, its suppose to taste like poor man's lobster.

[Oagie]

The biggest mistake that people make when they first try a pike is they dont remove the skin.  I have heard time and time again where someone who tried pike but gutted and scaled it like a trout.  Yuck.  So, make sure you fillet them.

So, here is how I prepare them.  Fillet the fish and remove the skin.  I also cut the Y-bones out and if it is a large fish I will cut out the lateral line (alot of the "fishy" taste resides there).  

As for cooking, I season with salt, pepper and dip in flour.  Use a hot frying pan with a little oil.  When the meat starts to flake apart, you are ready to eat.  

Is it lunch time yet?

[shiner]

Rub them down with sage stuff them with poultry stuffing bake in covered pan .     SHINER   8)

[Yellow Belly]

Cold-water pike are pretty tasty. I don't really care for them in the summer time.

I personally like to cut the fillets into smaller (thinner) pieces and coat them with the same thing I use for perch. I will usually soak the fillets in a little salted water for a while to help tame the flavour.

Get some bread crumbs and season them with cajun spices. Add a little flour to the crumb mixture. Dip the fillets into milk or egg then dip into crumb mixture and deep fry until golden brown.

[grumpymoe]

Yellow Belly--try this on all northerns up to max 4-5 lbs  i try to take extra care before slabbing to wipe off with water/vinegar mixture to get rid of the mucous. place all slabs flesh to flesh before skinning and removing all bones.--have yet to have any strong or offensive tasting fish and have managed to pass off northerns for walleye/perch to any that tried them. then fry up your favourite way. i'm sure you'll probably try them in summer as well (as long as its clean water their taken from) happy eating

[howey1176]

After filleting the pike into 5 boneless fillets, I soak in salt water for about an hour. Thats if Im not going to freeze them. After soaking them I rub them down with a pepper, rasberry vinagrette, and butter (not margerine) paste. Then I put each fillet in its own piece of aluminum foil with a chunk of butter and seal the foil around it leaving enough room inside for the steam and butter to puddle under the fillet. Then cook on the grill. Pretty tasty.

[DipLip]

Merry Christmas, guys!

I'd agree 100% that these fish are great eating in the 4-5# range. I'd never kill one much over 6-8#'s...that's a valuable spawner, from what we observe in the shallows every spring. Those giant females are usually well past their reproductive phase. The 6-10#ers are in their egg droppin prime. They go back.

Thing to remember with pike is that they are at the top of the food chain, and get their pick of the best forage. Good pike lakes produce pike that are baitfish feeders almost exclusively. While they are opportunists and will eat crayfish, leeches etc, the best pike are like corn-fed cattle: they eat a high-end diet that produces excellent quality eating on the table. Just like walleyes or lakers, their diet's prime and so are they. Their flesh is like a walleye's. Not quite as pale white, but every bit as firm, delicate and mild. Most of our pike water up here has smelt, cisco, rainbow/lake/brook trout, shiner forage base, and the pike are great eating.

Great recipe ideas above, by the way!