Catch & Cook in the Mountain.

Here it is. Hey guys it's Mimi. Today we're fishing here in Taipei up in the mountains in the rivers. We're gonna try to find some Ayu sweetfish. They're really really good Japanese fish perfect for grilling and it's found here. Oh and this is my friend Sam. He's gonna be joining me for this adventure. Let's go. We are going down this path right now to go fishing. Let's go. Now getting to the fishing spot is no easy task. We must embark on a 15-minute hike down the steep mountain slope to reach the river valley. Okay we finally made it. Look at the river. It's so pretty. Let's go and check it out. This last part you don't need to hold a rope or anything because it's fairly flat. The water is actually so blue. My gosh. We finally made it. Okay thank god I didn't fall. Took me 15 minutes to hike down. This is what the water looks like. It's super cold and very crystal clear. You can kind of see that really nice blue color. We brought some fish. I'll teach you guys why. It's called friend fishing and it's a Japanese fishing technique where you use a bait fish to catch the same species of fish. That's the fish that we got. You see that blue part right here? The water looks very very shallow but it's actually quite deep. My friend's gonna show you guys. This is Sam by the way. It's really really deep and that's why when you go fishing you gotta be careful because you really don't know. You can't tell from the surface how deep it is. This part with rocks is but when it's really blue the water is deeper and deeper. I'm also gonna take my shoes off because I want to go in and test out the waters. It's super super cold. The water is very clean too. I'm actually stepping on the rocks right now. The small pebbles are okay. If you step on the big rocks it gets super super slippery. Do you see the current here? It's kind of pushing it down downstream. There it gets a little bit dangerous so we stay on the shallow area. You can see the current going down there. That's kind of like a little riptide and it gets more dangerous because you're going to be swept by the stream. And here it gets deep too but he said there's actually some fish there. The water is so clean. This is actually the water that people in Taipei drink from. The water that's from the mountain goes downwards and it gets processed. We're walking to our next stop. The place we're going to next is where we're actually going to be fishing. So it's just at the front. Look at this current. This is my first time actually fishing like this. 20 minutes hiking down to get here but it is so worth it. This is one of the best places to fish. Not because you catch a lot of fish but because it's just so beautiful. We just got some tea that my friend made. Kind of like a cold brew tea but yeah cheers to us making it here. Oh it's moving. This is the are you sweet fish. No one actually knows about this fishing technique. It's not common at all. This is probably the most natural fishing technique since you're not using a fish or whatever. All you need to do is bring your fishing rod and a live fish. This fishing technique is only for are you sweet fish because they don't eat fish bait. Look at how long this rod is. It's not really an ordinary fishing rod. The salmon is actually making his way into the water. It's actually quite big. Are you sweet fish are extremely territorial especially the adults. What they eat is algae that are grown on the stone. That's why when they grow up they are extremely territorial regarding one stone. So once we let this live bait fish go inside the fish that surround the stone will try to attack him and that's when they will be hooked by our live bait fish's tail. We are trying to fish another one because we weren't able to find any are you sweet fish. Unfortunately it's not really in the season. They start like breeding a couple months ago and towards this time of the year most of the fish has already been fished away or they're dead or they're just better at hiding. Now we're gonna be using some bread to catch the next one. Now we're gonna be using some bread to catch the next one. The next fish we're catching is a Taiwanese fish called ku hua. Ku is bitter and hua is flower. So bitter flower fish if you want to be exact. I asked why it's called bitter and supposedly it's because the fish actually tastes very bitter. The organs of the ku hua fish is very bitter but the meat itself is not bitter at all. Let's go catch our lunch. So I'm gonna be using my sunscreen. I got the Shiseido because it is sunny out here. Just got one. We just got one. Some stripes. It's too small so we're just gonna. I think we caught something because I it's the orange part is pulling us down. I think we got a fish. Come on it's so small though look at this. Caught one. This is my first catch of the day but look at how tiny it is. I didn't expect it to be this small. Wow. We're making a little fire right now to cook our fish. We just put some beef in here. Steak. It smells so good. Look at this. The beautiful steak that we just cooked. Looks amazing. Let's dig in. This is the Ayu sweet fish that was caught here at this river. The smell is just so fresh. Wild caught fish is another level. I'm so excited to try this one out. Wow it's so crisp. This one's a little burnt. Now we're just adding a little bit of Himalayan salt and nothing else. No seasoning nothing just salt. Sam was telling me that you can actually taste the difference between a wild caught fish versus a store-bought like farm fish. Wild caught fish it tastes so much more fresh. There is that earthy seafood taste but with store-bought fish all you taste is just meat. Not much flavor there and intensity. Are you sweet fish? Let's eat it. It's so good. There's really not much bones here. That's why a lot of people like this. Very fresh. Very very tender as well. The skin is pretty crispy as well. It's so nice to just be catch one at the river and then just cook it right here. This brown part is very bitter. It's the liver part. This fish their diet is eating green algae so that's why the liver part is really bitter but towards the end there is a little bit of a sweet aftertaste. I don't like it. Oh god it's so bitter. This one is 80% lean 20% fat so it's a little healthier. So good. So good. This is the live bait fish that we used earlier and now we're gonna cook it. This one is store-bought and you can tell it's also farm fish. It's not as colorful. This one is also a lot bigger. This is the farmed fish. I'm gonna try it for the first time and see how it is compared to the wild fish that we tried earlier. I think I know the biggest difference. The farmed fish the meat is a little bit thicker. It's a little bit harder as well. It's like flaky flaky flaky versus the wild one which is super super tender. When I bite into this all I taste is meat and I guess that's what we're so used to eating. Wild caught fish just tastes fresher. Okay I think I want to try it out. Okay you know what I'm gonna try to drink this water. Oh my god okay okay. It's pretty good. It's very sweet. It tastes like natural spring water. Let's make some tea with this. This is the very nice tea from Alishan which is a mountain in Taiwan. It's very well known for tea and it's nice you can have this beautiful view and drink some tea. Remember this tea the water came from this river. Yep you're right we're drinking river water. We're releasing the fish that we're not gonna eat because these ones don't taste that good. So let's release them one by one. I'm climbing this just to get back to where we came from. It's gonna be hard. Can you believe that we just did fishing and now we need to do some rock climbing as well. Oh my gosh. Yes. Oh yes. Now we're 80% done but Sam is already tired and he's taking a rest. He's carrying quite a bit of stuff too because we we had some food right. I'm tired but we must keep going. We're almost there. Hey guys we're still stuck on hiking. I guess it's gonna take us some time yeah but this is like what the fifth stop that we made but hey we're all beginners here no judging. But if you look above we're actually super super close to the top. Just barely there almost there. We made it. This is what Sam's friend caught. It's the ayu sweetfish and he caught a lot today. I think it's yeah It smells so fresh. Bye. See you guys next time.