Most folks who “know” Ernest Hemingway know that he spent many years in Northern Michigan. His family owned a summer home called Windemere on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan. Growing up Hemingway fished for Brook Trout in most of the area streams, including School and Bear Creek, and the Boardman, Sturgeon, Black and Pigeon rivers. I have fished many of these same streams over the years, as we owned a family cottage near Elk Rapids on Grand Traverse Bay for over 40 years.
In 1920 Hemingway wrote a piece for The Toronto Star entitled “Camping Out.” In it he wrote, “A pan of fried trout can’t be bettered and they don’t cost any more than ever. But there is a good and bad way of frying them.”
Hemingway’s recipe was simple. “The proper way is to cook over coals [in a fry pan]... Put the bacon in and when it is about half cooked lay the trout in the hot grease, dipping them in corn meal first. Then put the bacon on top of the trout and it will baste them as it slowly cooks. The coffee can be boiling at the same time and in a smaller skillet pancakes being made that are satisfying the other campers while they are waiting for the trout.”
My father and I cooked Brook Trout this way, especially on fly in fishing trips in Canada. Our Indian guide, Eli, would set up a shore lunch right on the banks of a lake and grease the spiders (flat-bottomed fry pans) with lard. The red fleshed Brook Trout were gutted and cleaned a few feet away, then brought over and dredged in corn meal, waiting for the strips of bacon to crackle. The Trout would fry up beautifully in the hot grease, crisp skin on the outside and succulent moist flesh inside.
From the water to the tension of the line to the hot spider is more than just a state of mind, as you cannot create this dish unless you are really there.
Richard Wottrich
