Bushcraft Skills | Prepare a fish the Traditional Alaskan way

Description

In this video I prepare a trout the traditional Alaskan way from start to finish this process takes about 10 minuites, it is however drawn out a bit here due to filming

Tags: YouTube Editor,Fish (Animal),How-to (Media Genre),Fishing,Bushcraft,survival,cooking,fire,Survival Skills (TV Genre),Ray Mears,Camping,Food

Video Transcription

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hi guys so what I'm doing now is I'm preparing breakfast for me and Dave the cameraman and breakfast when I have going to be having this truck I the way I'm going to prepare it is it's a way that I've seen ray mears do it on one of his shows and I'm going to try and do that myself and take you through it I've only done this a couple of times so it may go a little bit wrong at points but the reason I wanted to do it without practicing at verse is to show you guys any problems you might come up against so before we start going to go through how I prepare my area for doing it I've collected some of these fresh ferns that's basically to give me a clean working surface it's really oughta me here there's lots of leaf litter and stuff on the floor to one side I've got a towel just to wipe my hands on and bits and pieces I'm doing it as the Slimers from the fish can sometimes make you lose a little bit of grip on your knife and I'm also right next to the fire here the reason that's the by it's because the time of year normally I just do this sort of anywhere usually away from the camp to keep animals and things away well this fish is cold I'm going to have my hands inside it and they're going to start getting quite so quite cold quite quickly so while I'm doing this I can give them a wipe down with a towel and give them a warm on the fire as I'm where I need to okay so I'm going to start so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to get this thin poke it out like that and hold it in place and then just very carefully trying to make sure not to cut myself gonna cut that thin out it is quite slippery were this so I'm cutting underneath my fingers their last thing I wanna do while I'm doing this is nick Mahan so I'm going to keep all this stuff will probably sue that up later on and do the other thing on the other side now I've pre gutted this fish I didn't want to show it on the video because it's a bit gruesome and I'm not really into showing that kind of thing you know there are videos out there already and if people really do want to see that kind of stuff you know let me know when I will do it it just seems a little bit disrespectful and inappropriate just jump runs the water just rinsed out after godson that's those two fins off the next job cuts off is dorsal fin now when I've done this in the past I've been asked quite difficult because there's a hard bit under the dorsal fin but this one seems to be coming off much easier so these all have bit of meat on them which can still be used makes good breath actually like a stock or soup so I've cut the dorsal fin off there and now flip the fish round make a cut from behind the the head and the gills here just inside turning the knife over some coming up and staying away from myself and we're caught this section here so that comes in their side up in take one to one side let's make sure that's way down flip them over and then do the other side it is the same way so here's what I'm come in the back of the gills just pushing the knife in and then very carefully cutting around this thin and up which now means that he's nice and open so the next bit which is the bit that I really struggle with last time is I've got to find the spine down here down inside him and then pinch these ribs here you can see they're just popping out trying to do I'm doing this a bit an awkward angle so you can see on the camera what's going on so I'm just popping those ribs out and just literally the coming out really easily just

coming away from the meat and just take a little bit time it's really simple it's important to stay close that spine because you need to take that all away later on it's a really good way of doing this this fist in this way because nothing gets wasted occasionally a ribble pop off like that just make sure you get those there's nothing worse than eating fish down to pick bones out of your mouth

just keep going and in a moment we'll give the other side walk one up there so again I'm going to find the spine when the thumb and then just work those words like so

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that's a little bit tricky because I keep catching the meat itself and obviously what we want to keep the meat left squeeze in here like to give this a little bit of a rinsing moment let the popular got Eve it's in there not a problem because I always clean anytime I do anything like this I always clean it just before I cook it anyway especially being outdoors working on the floor I'm just dying to get very cold now the others decision down here just to get the rest of those bones away from the spine all the way along now at the last bit is I need to get right now that's fine right in start to pull it away all that flesh see now it's up it's all starting to come away and I get in college who I make a bit of a mess of it so I'm just going to give them a warm it started to get really hard now cause my hand's absolutely freezing and i'm losing that's kind of not the feeling but i'm losing a bit of sensation in my hands i'm just going to give them a little warm on the fire get a bit of life back into them which is kind of mistake i made last times I didn't let my hands warm up go come around here tail just to get up tail free I was likely to be a few to cook one or two bones potentially left in here but I'm just going to go through pick them apart shortly then just Nick round the back of the head there and the head and the tail she'll come free with the spine still attached to two of them oops rockfish my cook and there you go so they're still bits and pieces of meat on there which again we can save for later don't waste anything then I'm going to pick out the last few bones I've got left in its not the tar deist way to do a fish but you'll see why in a moment when I prepare it for cooking why it's a really nice way to do the fish we go with our nice trout state wedding there to go so we're going to leave it there for a second I'm going to give my hands a bit the clean and then we'll come back and I'm going to show you how I'm going to prepare the fish for cooking because we need to get the fire going a little better now as well okay so the fish has been prepared ready to cook but now I've got prepare my sticks for cooking it so what I've caught I've got a piece of what tree is that this is a piece of Sycamore just it's Greenwood just so it doesn't catch fire and it's nice and strong it's pretty easy for me to split okay now first things first I need to have a look at this award okay it's got a bit of a bow in it like that so this is going to be propped up at kind of this angle which means at that bow if I try and have it pointed upwards he's going to keep falling down so I need to make sure that the split i'm going to put in this runs in the correct place so that when that bowl points downwards my splits could be the right place that this was the straight straightest piece of suitable would i could find that was nearby okay so i'm going to split the water down to about let me just two seconds check the links to the fish so the fish comes to this point on the stick so really I want to split the stick down to about here just to give me a bit of room to move now always going to use my apps to do this which is why it's here but when I've got over here and have a look I can actually probably do this from a knife a little soon simpler it's just the same ways you may have seen me making and tongs for cook him put on a lot slightly larger scale so I'm going to put my knife in straight through the pith of the wood I'll bring that close to show you straight through the pith of the wood here with the using the part the blade that's close to handle I'm just going to rock it and that will start to sink in okay then making sure I've got a sturdy surface to work on give that a bit of a rock get my axe okay so I'm just going to give this little tap to get it in so let's start splitting don't leave the axe now and then what I can do is just start to work that knife through now I've got my knife my hand underneath this knife I'm not putting any real downwards pressure on this if that knife slips it's going to come straight out and straight into my knuckles earth so all I'm doing is just gently work in that ward now immediately have hit am not here so I'm just got to knock it in a little bit more and then I'm twisting the split wants to come towards me here so I'm twisting my knife away to realign that split like so so it's split that split has come around the not here and then back to the center just need to wiggle my knife in it's not playing nice this would watch it my split seems to be running off to one side which does happen from time to time but it's not a huge problem we can deal with it to try and get our split to realign yourself okay it's not the best split I've ever done but it'll do so that is our split piece of what a nice Tommy like to study my butt to one side for now and what I then need to create is some small sticks just to hold the fish open so what I'm going to use I have some more green wood off its a branch off the same through this came from making sure I'm not wasting any bits of the Greenwood I caught and i'm just going to slap it into sections now i need three of these there's one two and three so the two shorter ones are going to go either end of the fish and then the longer one will go in the center I just need to put a little point on each of these doesn't have to be mega sharp it's just to guide it through to stop its snagging on the meat which will see shortly just like that just like that this is where you see the important sign of really sharp knife comes in as well with a blunt like this would be much much more work now I haven't measured these so we may have to remake them when we get to the fish but I didn't want to keep running off the shop so there we go nose up a little and that is ready now to go in the fish which will turn the camera down reposition ourselves near the fire and i'll show you how to set all okay so everything's prepped now to get the fish going all I've gotta do now is insert these sticks into it which is really really simple ok so I'm going to start on this side just poke a little hole in it on between my two fingers the skin is quite tough I'm going to take my first stick through and use it as a measurement for the next one's going to go through sorry the smoked will write on me so that's the first stick in gah

do apologize of smokers decided to go right well with both tell you what we'll do we'll rearrange where will work just some of this stuff over places be putting my cameraman to the test and we'll work here out the smoke that also demonstrates the use of using these ferns as well it means i can just pick the whole lot up in one big bundle and then go with it so there's the first stick through i'll show you what these sticks are for in a moment why we need to use them need to get the second one in just poke a little hole here and misjudge the last one because of the smoke and actually made an extra cot in the fish which I didn't really want to do but doesn't matter too much that stick goes through there and then through the other side and what these will do is they'll actually keep the fish open while it's on that whilst it's on the fire really really really good technique I'm having to I can't push the sticks straight through the fish because the fish is actually really tough but I try to poke hole and a piece of leather using a sharp stick it's just not doable so I've got to go the other way because I'm not in it so no it goes just like this

and that's our sticks through so now I need to grab my split stick and a piece of grumble I've just D thorned hopefully teeth on then slide the fish in between the splits

and those sticks once it's quiet down we'll keep this fish open when we prop it over the fire just like so man using my piece of ramble hopefully it's going to be strong enough it's quite difficult because the fish is slippery I'm going to just wrap it around here

kind of using it as a witty just tie that in and that will just stop that split from opening well it's over the flyer and there we go that's ready to cook now the next stage where we're going to do this which move back over to the fire is I'm going to prop this in the fork from my cooking rig and then we need to get the fire going again and it will cook apologize that is actually upside down so there we go just like that and that is good to go so we'll get back to you once this is cooked and the fires going and we'll tell you how is cheers guys and it's time to give it a try talk about 25 minutes to cook it it's still hot it's literally just qualify probably still see it's steaming and the fish is just coming away from the skin really really nicely so I'm just go wash my hands going to give it a bit of a bit of a bit of a taster not really nicely mmm it's really really good so I think since you moan about 60 look I think it's time for daves I'm gonna have a drive all day track really good taking a few hours this may be because it Tommy is it's really good the smoke smell a really really nice flavor when I told if I was off there that's good so gonna leave it there guys and then I'll get back to you when we'll pack it up thanks you later you