Still the best fish I ever ate: Fresh-caught trout cooked on a campfire

Cooking up that first fresh trout.

I didn’t like fish until I ate it fresh. And by fresh, I mean fish that was cooked and eaten right after it was pulled out of the water.

 

That was cool.

 

I had that very fresh fish on a camping trip with my best friend the summer we graduated high school. After setting up our tents in the forest, we headed to the water to catch dinner. 

 

My friend snagged some trout, then her mother’s boyfriend cleaned the fish, coated the fillets in cornmeal and fried them up in a cast iron pan he heated on the fire.

I can still smell the cornmeal, hear it popping in the oil, and can still taste that moist, flaky trout that was unlike any “fishy” fish I’d eaten before. Until that trout, I never imagined that fish could be good, let alone delicious!

Because I had never eaten truly fresh fish before. And though I’d spent much of my childhood fishing with my sister, I’d never seen much point to it until that camping trip — I don’t remember my sister ever catching much, and I definitely don’t remember us cooking up anything delicious afterward.

And while I’ve eaten plenty of great fish since that trout, I can’t remember any of it tasting as good as that meal caught and cooked for me right by the water.

Heading out to get dinner.

Dinner!