Or rather, I went with a friend to Lake Päijänne to check his gill nets.
Arto has ten of them. They are each 60 meters long and rest on the bottom of the lake. Some nets we set were 30 meters deep.
Here's the concept:
poor little guys.
Lake Paijanne is huge, and it's great seeing what kind of things find their way into those nets.
Most of the fish that were caught were what Arto called "bream" - they were more like a drum or a carp. We probably caught 30 of them. Arto only kept one. A big one. He said occasionally when he goes to market, there's a guy from Thailand or Vietnam or somewhere who will buy it. He just cleans them and sells them whole, per kilo, to a local food market.
His target species are pikeperch (like a walleye or saugeye, "kuha" in Finnish), burbot (a freshwater gadiform, catfish/cod-like), perch ("ahven" in finnish), whitefish, and muikku. If you stay in Finland long, you will know about muikku.
The fish:
whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus)
smelt (Coregonus pallasii) (I recommend clicking on this one)
This one was stuck in the net and when Arto put tossed it to me he said, "They smell like cucumbers..."
So I put it up to my nose and sure enough, it smelled (smelt!) like a cucumber. Odd.
Pikeperch (Sanders sp.)
Burbot (Lota lota) (very neat fish)
(little pikeperch)
By the end of the day, the cooler was full of big pikeperch.
Arto gave me five fish and said I earned it.
Muikku (Coregonus albula)
Muikku are a tasty little fish that you can buy in centrum, grilled and mixed with vegetables, during festivals or busy Saturday nights. The ones you get from the grills are usually the size of small sardines. The one we caught was pretty big; I ended up pan-frying it in oil with some onions and cayenne pepper.
The fish at the top here is a perch (Perca fluviatilis). This was a good-sized one and it was delicious. The pikeperch was also really good. I don't know which one was better. I baked the perch and pikeperch in foil.
mmm...muikku...
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