Do you love to cook shore lunch as much as I do? Well if you do, the shore lunch can be the highlight of any fishing trip, but for some, the work that goes into a great shore lunch can be quite daunting. Not only packing the supplies, but creating a fire ring (or finding large enough logs to use a a stable platform), finding a way to bring along a cooking grate, bringing in fuel or having to pack an axe to chop up enough wood – there are many possible challenges. It doesn’t have to be that way though.
I have different set-ups for different needs (short trip vs long trip, how many people will be eating etc), and I recently found what may be the quickest and easiest way to cook fresh fish, using the Solo Stove Campfire. I’m not new to the Solo Stove family, having already done a post on my use of the Solo Stove Lite earlier. I’ve used the Solo Stove Lite mostly to boil water for coffee and for rehydrated meals, but I was intrigued with the idea of cooking a shore lunch using one of the larger units.
I was on a fly in trip earlier in the year, and we found it impossible to find a location to have a shore lunch, other than where the camp was, we just couldn’t find a spot that had enough rocks to build a fire ring, or accessible logs to use as a base. I thought there had to be another choice, and the Solo Stove Campfire might just be it. I had the chance to chat with a contact at Solo Stove, and explained that I felt anglers who do remote trips and love to cook fish, face the same challenges that back packers / hikers / campers face – that being needing light weight cooking options, without having to bring in fuels, and they had to be compact. When you pay for extra weight flying to remote outpost camps, space and weight are at a premium, literally. So after getting my hands on a Solo Stove Campfire, I scheduled a time to go fishing with my brother, the plan being to catch a fish for lunch, and cook it using the Solo Stove Campfire and a fry pan.
No need to go into detail on the fishing, but suffice it to say we secured a nice eater sized Northern Pike for lunch. It was a cool late fall day, with the temperature at the time of the meal being about 10 degrees celsius (about 50 fahrenheit), and I have had challenges in the past getting pans hot enough on cool days. After pulling up to a nice rocky shore, my brother went about cleaning the fish while I gathered some twigs and small branches, the thickest being about 1 inch in diameter. I broke them up by hand to be about 5-6 inches in length, which was the perfect size to act as fuel. The video below does a better job of showing the process, but in far less time then it normally takes, we had a hot fire going in the stove, which also acted as a stable platform for the frypan with oil. I was able to cook enough fish for two anglers, in one batch, with less time spent feeding the fire than I had expected. Had I cooked potatoes as well, I would have needed to use either a larger pan, or simply had a larger supply of wood handy (which was in abundance) to cook one batch of potatoes and one of fish.
If you are back packer /hiker / camper, I bet you are already aware of these biomass stoves (meaning you cook using the deadfall, leaves, pinecones etc), but as an angler or outfitter it may be a new idea. Whether you run a lodge and are looking for easy ways to help guests enjoy a shore lunch, or your are an angler that wants to have a great meal, but not take up too much valuable fishing time, this is definitely something you need to check out. Please watch the complete video from unboxing, to eating, below. And as always, don’t forget, to sign up and have my most recent post sent right to you!