Bulgarian Adventures

Some random river and food shots

 

Always a treat to see your posts man. Glad to learn you are well. Thank you for sharing your adventures, it sure is a fascinating place you live. What was the meal you had by the river? looks delicious.

 

Thank you, sir!

It is a fish soup, called "Salamura", traditional for the Danube region of the country. It is tomato based, quite spicy and has a few different kinds of river fish, depending on what they've caught that day - usually catfish and carp. I also had grilled catfish, the wife had fried and they were both amazing. It's European catfish, I think the ones you have in the States are a different species? These can grow more than 2 meters in length, in fact recently some guys in Italy have caught one that is 2.85 m long and is probably an all time record, but they didn't weighted it, as it couldn't be done without hurting it.

 

Thanks for sharing. Like the idea of eating local. The local cuisine is really interesting. I like the meals, soups and stews and such you show. Kind of seems as ancient as the landscape and history of the country/region you live in. Stay well man.

 

if you ever get a chance to travel to Canada , I’m begging you to come the Fraser Valley in BC

In the Fraser River are monster freshwater sturgeon fish. Some get to be 20’ plus

It’s a catch , document, release fishery though

 

Majestic fishes! I would love to visit that place! Some species also inhabit the Danube, in fact the ship restaurant offered two of them, but I didn't knew what to expect, so I left tasting them for the next time. In the past they have caught Huso Huso, that's the latin name, don't know what exact type of Sturgeon it is in English, over 500 kg
They used something called "karmak" which is very thick line, or wire, with tens huge hooks on it, the fish gets caught in that and there's no escaping. It's forbidden now, but the river is still full of the old ones and there have been people caught and drowned...
I would love to fish one of theses beasts one day and will definitely release it, such a dinosaur species deserves to live.

 

Speaking of Sturgeon - here's one from a museum we visited today - that's the Huso Huso.



It was the size of a small boat!

And a baby white Alligator Gar

 

We see alligator gar all the time. Huge ancient creatures as big as those sturgeon. Hard to catch and vicious fighting if you do.

 

We don't have them here, so I've only seen them on the River Monsters until yesterday Awesome fish!

 

I’ve seen these all my life. They were endangered for a period of time. Our photo history has images of some even bigger than this.


despite their toothy appearance they are not much of a danger to humans. A walk along a gravel shoreline can garner you a mesh bag full of gar teeth. We would always do this on river trips in my younger years.


But I guarantee you, if you are drifting in a 12 feet long plastic kayak and this turns on the surface next to you at arms length…you will definitely consider how minuscule and unimpressive you are in the scheme of things!

 

Freaking insane to think that both sturgeon and Gar are prehistoric fish that have been around for thousands of years

 

I caught some huge ones when I worked for the state fisheries office. All my work was in salt/lower brackish water. An 8ft+ gator gar gets in the gillnet and that sampling set us next to ruined. We eventually learned to ease them out the net without getting their head tangled.

 

Were they delicious

 

I’ve never eaten it. We were able to release the ones at work.

 

The only way I have been able to stomach gar was pickled. They would rip us off when I fished the Missouri as a kid, snag fish off the stringer and sometimes right off your hook. I didn't appreciate the sport as a kid, tackle was expensive and they wasted it! Now the Sturgeon out of that river were some of the tastiest freshwater fish I have ever had.

 

Holy,Moly!!! I knew if it was over your head there were monsters in it!!! I ain't never going in the water again!!!

 

I always had a feeling they’d be stronger tasting, gator gar smell absolutely horrible when you pull them out the water. I’ve never had sturgeon before.

 

Southern Gar is only really good when fresh and hot. When I was younger the kin would chop or grind it, mix in tons of hooya hot red spices, vinegar, buttermilk, corn meal, bread crumbs, eggs for glue, ball it up like big hush puppies and fry it.
You ate it burn the skin off the roof of your mouth hot. If you let it get cold it tastes like greasy dirt.

 

Hot enough to kill your taste buds huh?

 

Precisely!