sandfly
Active member
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2006
- Messages
- 6,275
sandfly wrote:
almost time for the shad.
Mike wrote:
poopdeck,
I hear ya, but now a friendly “not true” is in order. Eastern Pa fisheries management staff broke the consumption barrier on American Shad. What you do is use a crab-cake recipe and substitute shad meat. The cakes are then rolled in cornmeal. They are unbelievably good and I would estimate that they have 90% of the flavor of a real crab-cake, but with a lot more meat. I used to bake one or two shad per season. The white meat was fine, but not great. The shad cakes are great! Now my wife suggests that I go shad fishing just because she likes the cakes so much.
As you know, deboning is the trick. It takes me about 20 min per shad after I bake the shad for the normal amt of time....10 min plus 10 min for each inch of thickness. I used to also debone shad fillets when cleaning the fish and I use the first two of the same cuts when preparing whole shad for baking. Instead of cutting the head off like you normally would to save the most meat, cut farther back by about 2.5 in, cutting down and angling forward at up to a 30 deg angle. This removes most of the “shoulders,” and gets rid of lots of tiny bones. Likewise, cut off the tail and most of the caudal peduncle by making that vertical cut nearly in line with the trailing edge of the anal fin. Again, that removes lots of bones. After baking the shad and because of those two previous cuts, your deboning task for shad cakes is a piece of cake.
Bryan Chikotas, who worked for a number of years with me in Area 6, worked in Area 5, and is now the AFM in Area 7 came up with this.
Mike wrote:
poopdeck,
I hear ya, but now a friendly “not true” is in order. Eastern Pa fisheries management staff broke the consumption barrier on American Shad. What you do is use a crab-cake recipe and substitute shad meat. The cakes are then rolled in cornmeal. They are unbelievably good and I would estimate that they have 90% of the flavor of a real crab-cake, but with a lot more meat. I used to bake one or two shad per season. The white meat was fine, but not great. The shad cakes are great! Now my wife suggests that I go shad fishing just because she likes the cakes so much.
As you know, deboning is the trick. It takes me about 20 min per shad after I bake the shad for the normal amt of time....10 min plus 10 min for each inch of thickness.
poopdeck wrote:
Mike wrote:
poopdeck,
I hear ya, but now a friendly “not true” is in order. Eastern Pa fisheries management staff broke the consumption barrier on American Shad. What you do is use a crab-cake recipe and substitute shad meat. The cakes are then rolled in cornmeal. They are unbelievably good and I would estimate that they have 90% of the flavor of a real crab-cake, but with a lot more meat. I used to bake one or two shad per season. The white meat was fine, but not great. The shad cakes are great! Now my wife suggests that I go shad fishing just because she likes the cakes so much.
As you know, deboning is the trick. It takes me about 20 min per shad after I bake the shad for the normal amt of time....10 min plus 10 min for each inch of thickness.
I would throw the meat away and have bone cakes.
It think you don't see shad in the local markets because the Fred Lewis family holds the only commercial shad netting license left. When the shad run was dead the commercial netting operations stopped buying shad permits except for the Lewis family. They purchased theirs every year even when their were no shad. Hence they are the only remaining and it's simply a historical operation kept alive by volunteers.
I find them to be in the Lambertville area starting roughly in mid to late March but you ain't catching many if any. One or two would be good in March. Shad are in the area between Lambertville and Easton all of April and is the prime shad fishing month. You can't go wrong timing a trip in mid April which is the best oppurtunity to catch 30 or more a day but a week here or there could make a difference between a dozen and losing count.
I will say if you have a boat and you get freaked out over other boats getting to close to you or your anchor line then please just stay home. Its comical listening to Karens who are just crossing something off their bucket list carrying on about how close you are. Mid April is packed with boats the majority of whom are super friendly and will even help you out if you don't know what your doing. I've met a lot of people during the shad run and look forward to seeing them every April.
poopdeck wrote:
You may be the only person in Pennsylvania who likes the taste of shad. You should go to new hope/Lambertville for shadfest. You can get your fill of shad for free since nobody ever takes a second bite of shad.