Walleye Nigiri Sushi? You bet

11 July 2007

Posted by Darrell under: Rantings Of An Outdoorsman .

Sushi anyone? Last Friday, Wayne and I headed to Bull Shoals Lake to spearfish. We had a great day and I filmed Wayne shooting a catfish and a walleye. I haven’t had time to look at the video yet, so hopefully it came out. If it did, I’ll post it soon.

We made it back to Springfield in time to meet some friends at one of our favorite local Sushi restaurants. In preparation for our dinner, Wayne and I filleted out our fish. I then took a piece of the walleye fillet and expertly cut it to look exactly like something you’d find on a piece of Nigiri Sushi. It looked awesome.

Before telling you the rest of the story, let me lay a little groundwork. A couple weeks ago, we fried up some fish at a friends house. I brought some paddlefish along for anyone that hadn’t ever tried it. Paddlefish is fine to eat. However, I wouldn’t suggest eating it alongside any really good fish like walleye or crappie. I’ll just say that Paddlefish is better when you don’t have anything to compare it to - and leave it at that. Anyway, we got to talking about a Man VS Wild episode where he catches and eats (raw) a fish of some sort. Billy, thinking he was funny, offered me $20 to eat a piece of raw paddlefish. $20 and 24 hours later I learned that it is possible to eat raw fresh water fish without getting sick. Please note that I’m just saying it is possible not to get sick - I’m sure it is equally possible to get really sick.

Back to the story: I slipped that fresh piece of Walleye in a ziplock bag with some ice and placed it in one of the pockets on my cargo shorts. Then, we were off to UMI for an evening of great sushi and fellowship.

Just as we’d planned, my friend Jeff ordered a huge variety of Nigiri. Our plan was to slip the walleye piece I’d cut onto one of the pieces of rice, replacing something Jeff ordered. When Jeff’s order arrived, we were all (at least the three of us in on the joke) dissapointed. We had to imrovise. I asked Zach if he’d ordered the Mackerel nigiri and (quickly catching on) he said he had. We were hoping that Jeff wouldn’t know what Mackerel looked like and we were right.

When Zach received his plate of sushi he quickly downed a piece and started oohing and aahing and stuck a piece of something on my plate, which I quickly downed and started oohing and ahhing too. Zach had pulled the tuna off one of his pieces of nigiri and replaced it with the walleye fillet. I must admit that it looked wonderful and as good as anything else on the table. In fact, it looked so good that Wayne didn’t even realize it was the walleye (and he was in on the joke!).

Jeff asked what was so good and Zach quickly handed him the walleye nigiri we had made up and told him to try it. Even though Zach and I were both laughing and trying to cover it up, Jeff stuffed that whole piece in his mouth. By this time, Zach and I were almost rolling off the table we were laughing so hard - but Jeff just kept on chewing. “Ummm, this is good stuff”, he said.

We quickly told him it was a raw Walley fillet, just in case he wanted to spit it out before becoming deathly ill. “Spit this out? Are you crazy? It is delicious!” Jeff said as he continued chewing and swallowed our creation.

I don’t know if Jeff was messing with us or not. But, he swears that the Walleye was really good. I’ll admit that it certainly looked good. And, cooked, it is probably my favorite eating fish. Why wouldn’t it be good (tasting) raw?

Next week we are all going spearfishing again at Bull Shoals. We’ve rented a big 50′ house boat and will be staying for a long weekend. Guess what we’ll be giving a try sometime over the weekend? Yeah, you guessed it, “Walleye Sushi”.

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