Challenge for Ted Peck!

Ted,
I just finished reading you article on Wisconsin’s best spring walleye rivers in the Wisconsin Sportsman magazine.
Now, before anyone gets the wrong idea here, I would just like to say that I actually enjoy reading your articles. I rarely miss reading any of them in the Wisconsin Sportsman magazine. I may forget about them shortly after, but I’m pretty much like that with just about anything I read.
Well Ted, for about the umpteenth time now, you wrote about how bad the fish taste from the Wisconsin River in my neck of the woods. It’s starting to create a bit of a burr under my saddle if you know what I mean.
So I’m just wondering aloud here: Does this guy, who obviously has fished all his life, still not know how to clean and prepare fresh caught walleye? Naw, no way, the guys been a dedicated fisherman his whole life. Not possible!
I do take quite a bit of pride in being able to take fresh caught walleye, clean them and serve them to people who have previously shared Ted’s opinion on fish from the river. Most of the time, if they like fish, they like what I serve.
The last time I did this, the client and his family both declared the walleye fillets caught from Lake Wisconsin last summer were absolutely the best they had ever eaten. Including walleyes that they had caught and eaten fresh while vacationing in Canada.
So how about a friendly wager Ted? I’ll clean and prepare some walleyes out of Lake Wisconsin and you bring some fillets from your favorite haunt. Lets do a blind taste test and see if there really is anything to this so called awful taste due to years of industrial pollution.
Remember now, I said a blind taste test. You won’t know which plate of fish is which until after you’ve eaten them.
JWB

Sounds to me like Ted gets a heck of a good meal. Go for it Ted!!!
Thanks, Bill

Sounds like a TASTY challenge to me. No breading or batters would be the way to go for a true taste test.

I can tell you right now this challenge will not happen.

Guys, remember this is just Ted’s opinion

If you don’t like his opinion you should PM him and talk about it. Making a thread on it to stir things up is not the way to handle this. Just my 2 cents, but who I’m I? just Ted’s buddy

I think this offer is presented in a profesional way, and is not at all offensive. Maybe some pre-concieved notion about the fish taste in our namesake river can be put to rest with someoene who writes in the state mag’s. The last time I ate fish from the Wisconsin river below the Mosinee dam (we all know the reputation this little area of river had) they were excellent, the paper mills have cleaned up there act a good deal and it has changed the way these fish taste…..just my 2 cents worth.

I’ll bring the beer!

I think it is a fair challenge. I also think Ted should take him up on it. Tourism is important to an area and writing stuff like the fish “tasting” bad in an area can hurt tourism for sure.

You’re absolutely right, Scott! If the Pikemeister can show me fillets from 18-20 inch walleyes that don’t taste like rotten paper and flat out STINK when ya cook ’em I will qualify all future articles re: taste of Wisconsin River walleyes to say that they are good from Lake Wisconsin south. I’ve eaten a lot of crappies out of Lake Wisconsin…feeding a lot of folks…and they all said the fish were yummy. I’ve also filleted and fried little 15 inch eyes and sauger from Mosinee and Nekoosa–both fresh and soaked over nite in either 7 up or milk in an aluminum pan…then battered lite in a mix of equal parts pancake mix and corn meal, with salt,pepper and a dash of garlic salt—and produced a meal that would make a buzzard fall off a gut wagon.
Let’s be honest here! It’s AG–All Good–just that some is better than others. My biggest crusade is frying up a mess of sheepshead and doing the blind test with a mess of walleyes (not from the Wisconsin river). The sheepies is just as good! Likewise, frying up the backstraps of lawyers (burbot/eelpout) out of clean water like Big Winnie…heck, the ‘pout is BETTER than ring perch, which I think is the finest eating this side of halibut from Alaska.
Guide Ron Barefield who also fishes the lower Wis. and L. Wis. and I keep a few ‘eyes/sauger from these waters every spring.And we eat ’em. And they ain’t too bad. But they don’t taste as good as waters like Apple Canyon Lake where I do a little guiding.
To reinterate—AG—All Good. A fish fry beats the daylights out of Chef Emeril’s greatest attempts at foxing up a can of Spaghettios.
For this blind taste test I suggest a couple of fillets out of the Wisconsin River around Nekoosa with an IDENTICAL batter on the sports section of the State Journal…bet I can’t tell the difference! But if there is slaw and fries…and BEER…it’s AG all the way!!!!!!!

Well said buddy.

Walleyes vs. Sheephead??? James will NEVER believe this!

James buddy! Can we put a site donation on the line that YOU can’t tell the difference between the two in a blind taste test??? We’ll conduct the test at this summer’s GTG!

C’mon buddy! You know ya wanna…….huh? HUH? C’mon! Score a couple a “man points”.

Tell ya what……. I’ll bet if you can’t tell the difference, Briank will even let you give him a swirly!

Hey ted, I have to agree, people just don’t understand how tasty a properly cared for(iced) and cut freshwater drum is. Maybee they can’t get past the name “sheephead”. It’s just like all the people who think a channel cat must tast better than a “mudcat”.

Hey guys, sorry it took me so long to respond. Just finished eating supper after a 12 hour shift at work. This is the earliest that I was able to get back on the computer.
Ted, thanks much for responding. Same goes for the rest of you walleye fisherman. Glad no one was offended.
I really don’t have any idea what walleyes from Nekoosa or any of those other place’s further upstream than Wisconsin Dells taste like. Never even fished up that far. But I have eaten a fair amount of fish from Lake Wisconsin, from up and down the Mississippi river, Canada, Lake Oahe and numerous other places around the state of Wisconsin.
In my opinion, when they are cleaned of all the red meat, there is very little difference.
Your article does not appear to differenciate between those upstream locations and the downstream ones.
I’m not in any way trying to defend the taste of any walleyes above the Wisconsin Dells dam. Only those of Lake Wisconsin.
I also don’t know if we will be able to work out the logistics of this challenge. But if we do manage to pull it off, I suggest that if I win the bet, then your next article on Wisconsin River walleyes clarifies that walleyes from the Wisconsin River below the Dells dam tasted just fine.
I’ll let you decide what I may have to do if you should win the bet.
Fair enough?
JWB

I will probably have to pull another long shift tomorrow. Which of course means that it will be after 7pm tomorrow night before I will be able to read any response.
It is my goal to keep this all friendly though. As I said once before, I do enjoy reading you articles and have no reason what-so-ever of showing you any disrespect.
JWB

Well said JWB

PS. That’s way this site is so great, because of anglers like you.

JWB–Sauk City is only 90 minutes away from my place here at Genoa and my legal residence 10 miles west of Beloit. Hooking up won’t be a problem, in fact if you can find a day between mid and late March I would like to come over and fish with you, doing a story for the Janesville Gazette. Haven’t written about Sac/Sauk for a couple of years in this venue. This weekend is out, gotta seminar to do at Thomson. Next weekend is out, gotta go fish Egypt in southern Ill. for crappie. Early next week would work or after March 15. got a few guide jobs between then and April 1 when it just gets crazy. Send me a PM and maybe we can hook up soon!