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Here are some lovely fish, tasty mushrooms, and rare orchids (& other wildflowers) that I encountered today and last Monday during, and on the way to, fishing trips in Clark's Marsh. Enjoy!

Jonathon

Thanks. Already missing the morels of spring here in Hoosier land.

You don't have any there in Indiana? I once found them in Texas! (Barton Creek Greenbelt in Austin - if they're there they could be anywhere...)

Jonathon

P.S. The orchid is listed as State Threatened in Michigan! I just sent word of it to the senior botanist at the Michigan Natural Features Inventory for some official recognition.

Jonathon

Aaahhhhh I may need to add a forum rule about not posting pictures of morels in the frying pan, because now I'm craving them and I don't have any! Those things are so damn good.

OK, sorry guys...but don't you have some good mushrooms up there in Alaska, Jason? You know, I have a friend here who dries them - perhaps a special package is in order!! A little soak in warm water and they're ready to fry...

Jonathon

There are supposed to be some morels up here, but I've never found them. I don't know what other mushrooms we have, but nothing can be a good as a morel.

Honey mushrooms, chanterelles, and "chicken-of-the-woods" - YUMMMMMYYYY!!!

Jonathon the "mycophagist" (or is that "fungivore"?)

Very nice outing. It feels good to bring something back home with you. Hey...those sunnies and 'gills are tasty too. My son and I just had our annual sunfish hunt and family fish fry. Since we were recently burned we're hoping for morels too.

Plenty of morels in Indiana, just their season is past now.

Ours should be done too but everything is late this year because winter just didn't want to let go, and we've had a cool spring. I wasn't even thinking about them anymore and then there was the one sitting right next to the trail...

Paul, how do you cook your sunnies? I've heard there are supposed to be some big ones around here in some of the lakes. The ones from the Marsh don't get really big, but they're plentiful, feisty, and within walking distance (well, a good 45-minute hike, but it's a beautiful hike). I also don't think they would taste very good considering the shallow, scuzzy water they come out of, but from the local lakes they should be pretty good eating. There's supposed to be some good yellow perch fishing in Cooke Dam Pond on the Au Sable - and I've caught perch before on Woolly Buggers and KBFs. I might have to harvest a few brookies this summer too...if you troutnuts will forgive me...perhaps if I run across some of my other favorite mushrooms!

Jonathon

Jonathon,

I know that this isn't the food channel, but your tantalizing photos of morels seems to have hit a chord with the two homesick boys Luke & Jason and myself.

I have two.5 stories regarding the lovely tasty little treats...

1987...My fist evening in Germany for a month long stay. I was in the little town of Amorbach. I had flown all night (without sleep) to Frankfurt, hopped in a rented Fiat Uno Diesel (try driving this dream car on the autobahn), and was sitting at dinner in the Gasthaus where we were staying...My girlfriend(now wife) had a stuffed trout from the local streams, I had a guyere cheese omellete with morels again from the local woods, boiled/buttered potatos, and a local Pilsner...I'm almost in tears here...Alles hat sehr gut geschmeckt!

No.2:

Back-in-the-day...A fishing friend and I were going to fish and pulled up to an access site at one of our favorite loops on the South Branch Au Sable...There were cars everywhere and we almost drove off when someone walked out from the woods and said they were all hunting morels and the river was ours alone to fish.

We fished our loop and as we were walking the deer trail back to the truck we spotted the mother lode...We couldn't believe our luck. Here were these pros tromping through the woods looking for morels and bingo we run up on handfuls of them.

.5: Rusty Gates' wife Julie ran the dining room at the Lodge until this season. She grew up in the old logging town of Lovell's and knew her way around a frying pan and morels...She always had folks staying at the Lodge that found morels and she would store them in the frig for them and cook them up as a side for them and their friends at diner...A nice glass of Pinot...Yum!

Well I was looking forward to just this senario when I ran in to my fishing buddy latter and discovered that he had swapped our scrooms for a bag of weed! Ouch!!! My taste buds slammed in to the wall for some "buds"!

Spence

"Alles hat sehr gut geschmeckt!" OH JA...those Deutchlanders know how to cook their mushrooms! We visited my sister when she was in the Army in Deutchland in a town called Idar-Oberstein back in '85, and the fabulous resturant there (sorry but you're gonna get hungry) had a separate menu for just soups, 8 of them listed and three were mushroom soups! Geez, now I'm getting hungry too...

You should have sent your bud-swapping "buddy" back out to the woods for more mushrooms, then you could have enjoyed them both!! "Bummer, dude!" Fresh morels are a little harder to come by - you can grow your own weed!!

Jonathon