I think there is another carp type fish that starts with the letter “B” but I can’t think of the name at the moment. I’ve heard carp in general are kind of bony but I’ve never kept any of the carp I’ve caught here to try them out. The way I understand it is that carp in the US are usually found in muddy bottom lakes and, therefore, don’t taste as good as the carp in the UK which live in rocky lakes. No idea if that is true or not.
The thing with perch is they’re easy to catch and plenty so you might be stuck eating a lot of those, even if they aren’t your favorite.
If you guys have stocking programs for trout, they can be a good option too. Freshly stocked trout can be really easy to catch once you have perfected the technique of “mini jigging.” It requires a rod around seven feet long, a small reel with two-pound test line. These “ultra light” setups help you cast the mini-jigs that weight 1/64 and 1/32 of an ounce.
Shiny stuff like spoons and spinners can work too and they have a few advantages. You can use a larger rod, they’re heavier so you can cast further and you might entice a salmon or pike as well. But, in the hands of an expert, the mini-jigs catch a lot more trout. The spoons and spinners are also very durable lures so you can get a lot more for your money.
Some simple tips for catching more fish are to keep the rod in your hand at all times and to pay attention to your surroundings. There are a lot of articles online on how to do that and what to look for when searching for a spot to fish in. You can also join a forum that specializes in fishing around where you live.
Since you’re fishing for sustenance, I would gill and gut the fish, instead of filleting them. You lose some meat when you fillet. Also, you can make broth with the head and bones of the fish. If you plan on freezing a fish for a long period of time, you need to keep the air out to keep it from getting freezer burn. Easiest way is vacuum packing it. Cheapest way would be to put it in a ZipLock type bag, then fill the bag with water, then freeze it. The water will keep the air out. But fish can last for months without those precautions.
So what is the freshwater fishing like over there? I hard access is very limited due to all the lakes and streams being privately owned. Is that true? Do you need to pay for permission to fish these private bodies of water? Any information about finding places to fish, getting permits, etc would be of great interest to me.
I’m a believer in the most humane possible kill in hunting and varmint shooting. I don’t think this can be counted on when hunting with a catapult/slingshot. In a survival situation where your life depends on killing something to eat, you do what you gotta do but short of that my personal belief is that one should strive to drop an animal in it’s tracks if at all possible.
When you say "My .22 Crosman does the job but is still pretty weedy " does that mean you are shooting animals that you do not recover?
I fired some full-auto stuff when I was in the States last year and had a great time doing it- well worth the experience!
Having said that, I’d be careful asking questions about whether anyone “Needs” to own guns on a US-based messageboard- it’s liable to get well out of hand pretty quickly.
I’m in Australia so I’m not 100% sure of the procedure in the UK to obtain a Shotgun Certificate, but I’ve heard it’s fairly straightforward. Find an experienced shotgun shooter or a reputable gunshop and work out what you want. Some people (myself) prefer side-by-side shotguns (like you see people hunting pheasant with during The Season), whereas others prefer the under-and-over type (like you see Olympic clay target shooters use).
I believe he’s saying that his .22 air-rifle will drop a rabbit, but it lacks the “punch” for bigger game like foxes, which are also often encountered when one is out hunting rabbits or hares (and are a major nuisance to farmers).
OP I’m following your thread with relentless fascination. I’m just starting to get back into fishing with my oldest son, and we live in a quasi-rural area in Indiana that has seven nearby lakes we can fish in, plus the Ohio River and it’s tributaries.
Bream? Barbel? It might be one of them but not heard of them being edible…I’ll look into that.
We do get ‘muddy’ carp here I’ve heard but we do also have a lot of gravel pits with huge carp in them so might be a taste difference. To be honest I’m not really thinking of eating these - I’ll try it once but if it’s not good I won’t focus on it.
Good point plus they’re fun to catch! My friend has tried them stuffed full of herbs etc. and he reckoned it was the best freshwater fish he’d had so might have to try it again.
Well just found out that this amazing stretch of the river Test we’ve been given access to is regularly stocked with trout so we had a lot of success yesterday using a heavily weighted chunky float cast upstream (into the ‘private’ stretch!) into a deep pool that acts as a ‘holding pen’ for the trout meaning that if you hit the right part of the swim you get bites every cast. It was really tricky to keep up the slack as it came towards me but was pretty good fun.
I’ll try a spinner again in the winter when the weed dies down in the winter as the brief attempt I tried ending in the weeds almost every cast! Thanks for the ‘mini-jigging’ idea, I’ll look into that and try it in the winter.
Thanks for the advice, I’m starting to be able to ‘read’ the river a little better each time I go and this is the side of it I really like so want to get better at it. The freezing technique is brilliant, will definitely put that to use.
It’s pretty good, there are a lot of places to fish for nothing but they often have rules attached, most of the good trout fishing is private but you can sometimes get lucky like I did and get access to an estate for free (well, I’ve got to do some ‘beating’ on a shoot soon but that’s cool anyway!). It’s quite restricted but perfectly possible to catch for food.
I kind of agree with you to be honest, I took it out and have realised it’s not going to be very effective even if I could hit anything. I might just use it to target practice as it’s quite good fun getting good with it!
No, it does the job on the animals I have hit but I know it won’t deal with much more so I wouldn’t even bother. I want something that I am confident will do what I want it to and not feel like I have to really think about the shot first.
Good point, I don’t have an opinion either way particularly so will shut up about it!
I have heard that as well, we have a reputable gun shop in Winchester so will check out what they have in and decide what I want. I have been invited to go out with the Gamekeeper so will get a chance to try the .22 and a shotgun as well as a more powerful rifle for deer - I’ll decide what I want after this but I predict I’ll want the shotgun as it seems like a more versatile gun.
Exactley, it works within a certain range for things like pigeons and rabbits but I wouldn’t even attempt a longer shot on bigger game.
How old is your son if you don’t mind me asking? I really think doing stuff like this with your kids (at whatever age) is really important. I didn’t do much with my Dad and feel like I really missed out (we’re kind of making up for it now I’m nearly 30!) so I fully intend to make sure I have a few things I can do with my kids when we have them. Good luck with it, let us know how you get on will you?
Thanks! I got an even better one this Saturday which was a total thrill to catch as it went ballistic plus it was delicious! You wait 29 years for a trout then 3 come along at once!
My friend has donated me a frozen foreleg of venison to try to make into jerky so will try it out this week - I’m off work and am going back to the woods on my own for 48 hours to try out a veriety of diffferent skills/techniques etc. so hopefully I’ll come back with a glut of fish and game so I can try my hand at preserving.
Thanks so much for all the advice folks, if you think of anything else or just want to discuss any of your successes/failures etc. I’d love to hear them!
All I can say is that variation between air rifles is a hell of a thing. I used to live with a couple friends with a back yard facing a golf course, and we set up a firing range. I had an old .22 pump, he had a .177 pump. Now, obviously, the .22 hit harder. But then, one day, I went out and got a new, still cheap .177, because one of the other guys was using the .22 all the time.
Guy with the .177 happened on it one day when I was working on a model, and used it to pop a squirrel that was trying to sneak into the garage. Now, with the old .177, it’d just kind of annoy the squirrel enough to make it run away. He came to me, face white. Apparently, the new one was so powerful that when he hit the squirrel, it just… dropped dead, pop. Hell of a thing to accidentally kill something, especially when you’re being stupid. But the point was, the newer gun had something like two or three times the power of either of the two older ones.
Willass, the foreleg is one of the hardest cuts to work from, which is probably why it’s still in your friend’s freezer. If you get higher up on the shoulder, you’ll have more and bigger muscles, the easier to get decent slices from for jerky. But lower down, the leg is full of tendons, which you absolutely have to get out. You really don’t want to be gnawing all day on something that would nicely be used to tie things together permanently. I tend to trim the small scraps of foreleg meat out and use them for stew.
But if you insist, it will be possible. Just follow the directions of the muscle fibers to get the meat out cleanly without the tendons. This is going to leave you with lots of narrow, long strips of meat. In this case, your best bet for jerky is going to be sliced lengthwise; if you tried to slice it cross-grain, you’d get a lot of tiny jerky chips the size of a dime or smaller. So you’ll end up with a chewier end-product for more work, but it’s still jerky.
There are some that run their meat through a grinder, being less careful about removing tendons. Then they lay out strips of ground meat to dry. I’m not personally familiar with this method, although my snack sticks are similar. I just hate to come across little inedible bits in my snacks, so I’m careful about the tendons.
It’s not too powerful (600fps) but kills pigeons and rabbits cleanly and efficiently at about 35 - 45 yards which is fine for my purposes although something more powerful and better made is something I’ll get when I have the spare money and have bought everything else I need. My friend has a .177 that is amazing, much more powerful and accurate but it was also £500 secondhand and I don’t have that amount to spend at the moment.
Well it was some roadkill a friend found and I think he’s got half a carcass in the freezer purely because he doesn’t know what to do with it so he might give me the rear leg instead - what section is the easiest to work with? He has half a deer down the middle so one of each leg and everything in between.
The rear leg is easier to work with, as the muscles are bigger. But if he’s giving you a whole forequarter, you’ll be fine. The shoulder has plenty of meat on it. I thought you were talking about lower down on the forequarter, instead of the whole piece.
Roadkill often is bruised and damaged though, so check it carefully. While I wouldn’t hesitate to use good roadkill if it was processed correctly, bruised meat is not good.
I shoot, but mostly shotguns, I no longer have the convenient shooting gallery. My new one was about 760fps, and cost me about 60 bucks. Maybe less. For 99-150, I think I could have gotten 1100.
But I havn’t been to a Wal-Mart that sold them and looked in a few years, my memory may be off. Even Crosman’s top of the line Marauder is only $500, not £500.
Daisy’s got a 800fps for $120. Weird, I don’t see any with the lever pump anymore.
Ugh. Shooting ducks on the water is considered extremely bad in most circles. Don’t let anyone see you do it. Better yet, buy a shotgun and do it the right way.
