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The Ft. Morgan trip is now only weeks away. I'm sure I'll be cursing myself, but I do plan on putting plenty of meat in the 'fridge to take home.
My best bet for keeping everything fresh for the 8 hour drive back is to pack in dry ice.
Does anyone know where I can get dry ice in or around Gulf Shores/Orange Beach?
The house we rent at Ft. Morgan has a freezer above the refrigerator. I pack fillets in qt. ziplocks with water and a little sea salt and freeze them daily. These frozen packages are essentially a replacement material for ice. The last fish that are caught and processed are placed on top; covered with ice. Our trip home is 7-8 hrs. The last packs are partly frozen by the time I unload them at home. The main concern is water in the bottom of my cooler. I stop for a pee/snack break at the 4 hr. mark and open the drain cock on the cooler. Been doing this for more than 30 yrs. and have never needed to change ice or anything. Main trick is freezing my catch. This means I am limited to the freezer, and the cooler, and the space in my car. CAR plays a large part in our harvesting due to space restraints. How many whiting, how many flounder, how many pompano (all), can we keep? Due to my usual luck and skill, sometimes the space issue for the cooler never comes up, lol.
Walmart normally has dry ice. If your fish is already frozen, put it in the bottom of your cooler, then a layer of several sheets of newspaper and about 5 lbs of dry ice on top.
Rouse's at the corner of 59 and Fort Morgan Road has dry ice.
Publix has it too.
IMHO fish keep much longer if you filet, vacuum pack (food saver) and freeze they day you catch them. I only have a 6hr drive home so they are still frozen when I get home. I put a beach towl in the bottom of the cooler and another on top and a bag of ice on top of that. I cover the cooler with the other towels and garment bag and keep it out of direct sunlight on the ride home.
I have an 8 to 9 hour trip. Filets frozen and vacuum sealed are still frozen when I get home as well. To me, Spanish and kings do better that way than frozen in water, fwiw. I boil most of my kings for mack salad. It keeps extremely well after cooking in vacuum bags.....but the wife isn't fond of the fishy smell in condo close quarters.
Sealing the cooler and keeping it out of the sun is key. Freeze fish. If you have fresh fish, wash, dry & then pack in ziplocks. Pre-chill the cooler.
Then pack ice, fish & ice. Fill any empty space with more ice or towels.
Then duct tape where the lid meets the bottom, seal it good, especially around the hinges & latches.
Put in the car and like Chillin noted, cover to keep it out of direct sunlight.
I once took 50 pounds of fresh shrimp from Mobile to northeast PA in a 120 quart standard white Igloo cooler using this technique. 24 hours later when I unsealed the cooler, there was barely 2 cups of water in the bottom of the cooler. It was a solid mass of ice and shrimp.
When salmon filleting, we do the same thing: vacuum seal meal-size cuts . . . no water. CO2 has always worked for me to assure freezer-to-freezer coldness. Chillenfish: yep . . . exactly like that.
Many thanks for the tips on available sources!!!
My foodsaver died 2 years ago, and I haven't pulled the trigger on a replacement. It kills me to pay so much and get such a flimsy product. How about other suggestions??? I've always used the foodsaver brand because plastic is readily available.
My first Foodsaver didn't hold up very long either. I looked at some of the others but the reviews were mixed for the cheap ones and the rest are way more than I can afford. I have the V3240 now and it seals better and faster than the old one and has a built in spot for the big rolls of bag material and a bag cutter. Amazon usually has a great deal on them around Christmas. Do yourself a huge favor and remove any trace of the red-blood line meat before freezing. Leaving a little isn't too bad on fish that's cooked fresh but it seems to "marinate" the rest of the fillet when frozen for a while and tastes pretty foul. I don't catch a ton of edible fish when I'm there and I hate for it to get ruined(rernt, ruint, rernd) by my laziness. Hope you catch a good mess.
Little tip on the vacuum sealers: Roll up one sheet of paper towel and put it in the bag on top of the fish so it soaks up any liquid that gets sucked out. Makes for a better seal and none of that glorp to stink up your unit.
Chillinfish---the technical term is "ruint".
I'm sure dry ice would work well, but it's expensive. I've always vacuum sealed dry filets, warped each pkg in newspaper, put a couple layers on top and duct taped it shut. After a 10 hour drive, we spend the night in a motel and drive another eight the next day. Still frozen when we get to the cabin in Wisconsin. Been doing this for 40 years without a thaw in standard igloo or Coleman cooler.
14-1/2 hr drive.here....vacuum sealed with minumal dry ice works great.....never had a problem with out the ice before.....last 2 trips I brought the small upright freezer for the extra fillets to store in the condo.....the fridge freezers just aren't big enough for the month stay on those trip's
And haywires tip is spot on with the paper towel and vacuum sealing
Haywire, never thought of that, THANKS!
Our FoodSaver vacuum packer is almost 10 years old now. We bought it with Target gift cards we got as presents from our wedding back in 2006. It was around $100 on sale back then. From everything I have read, the "cheap" ones are not worth the money. Go with one that is in the middle price range unless you are using it a lot, then the pricier ones are worth it. Buy bags in large rolls off Amazon, much cheaper that way.
Got back from a week (Oct 10-17) this past weekend.
Figured I'd just post a few comments about the fishing/accommodations:
- I don't think I could have picked a better place than the house on Ponce de Leon/Triple Tail in Ft. Morgan.
- Beach was great; people were great; weather was great; fishing was great.
- Got all we needed for ice/miscellaneous "stuff" at Sassy Bass (including dry). Just one run for groceries and junk at publix and wally world.
- Got all the fishing gear and near-shore advice at L&M. Stopped there BEFORE getting to Ft. Morgan. Great selection but you guys need a few more bucktail jigs with white hair. I'd bet you could find a local to make nicer stuff than the spro in the rack. Just a suggestion; your staff was very nice and helpful.
Fishing:
- Did I mention it was great? No exaggeration: had a line in the water less than 90 seconds (white and red Reef Runner we use for walleyes up north) and a bull red peeled off 100 yards. Fought him for 10 minutes before he straightened out the treble hooks. Yea . . . lesson learned . . . back to J&M in the morning.
- Fished the Dixey Bar every day (started each morning there). 4ft - 12 ft of water. Boated bull reds until the arms ached. Some great pictures of my 98 LB mother pushing 80 years old acting every bit the seasoned pro taking line when she could and laughing her A$$ off. And yes . . . beer at 10AM.
- 11 year old son was king of the sharks. Don't know how we're catching reds and he was stuck on sharks, but he earned the shark t-shirt so he got it. Next time, I'm sure he'll have better luck.
- The weather . . . uhm . . . how do you locals get any work done???
- Winds light and variable every day. 82-85, no humidity, blue skies.
- Took the 16 ft. Whaler off shore (a bit) to the rigs to troll for pelagics. No Yellow fin, but a nice mix:
- King Mac
- Spanish
- Little Tunny
- Wahoo
- Trolling bait:
- Clark spoons
- Anything silver (or gold) or shiny
- Shiny Rapalas
- Cigar minnows on mackerel rigs.
- Trolling inshore at about 7 knots and had a fairly large shark hit one rod so hard the impact snapped the base mount on my Cannon electric downrigger.
In short, we caught so many fish on so many different baits at different water column depths/levels (surface in 60 feet to 4 feet down in 8 ft of water); I can take almost no credit. We netted skates at the beach and cut them up to use as bait; that worked almost as well as live shrimp.
In my mind, I'm still there. 51 more weeks to go really. :congratulatory:
Great post, thank you for sharing. Now, how about the pics? Did you get the pics?
Its all tall tales and lies without pics! :)
Don't know what I was thinking . . . Skimpy on pictures, but here are a few:
http://www.gulfshorespierfishing.com...tid=4366&stc=1http://www.gulfshorespierfishing.com...tid=4367&stc=1http://www.gulfshorespierfishing.com...tid=4368&stc=1http://www.gulfshorespierfishing.com...tid=4369&stc=1