Bonus recipe for an easy meal:

When I’m at hunt camp and heading afield for the day, I like to return to a ready-made meal of Canada goose. Simply remove breast and leg meat, cut into bite-sized pieces and place in a slow cooker. Add 2 large cans of cream of mushroom soup, 1 package of onion soup mix, 2 cups of sliced mushrooms, half a Spanish onion (sliced) and ½ cup of sour cream; season liberally with Cajun spice. Leave on low heat all day long. When you get back to camp, just cook up a big batch of mashed potatoes and pile on the concoction from your slow cooker. It’s to die for. —Ken Bailey

Cooking tip

• Walleye and lake trout cheeks are flavourful little morsels often ignored by outdoorsmen and tossed out along with the rest of the head. They’re easily removed with a sharp knife, however, providing firm, tasty flesh with the consistency of a tender scallop.  —Gord Deval

The best fresh fish for a shorelunch are medium-sized lake trout, pike and walleye. If you’re going to deep-fry the fillets, it’s best to first cut them into cubes so they cook quickly and thoroughly—ditto if you’ll be wrapping them in aluminum foil. Leave the skin on, however, if you’re planning to grill your fillets over a red-hot bed of campfire coals. With that, here are my three favour­ite ways to flash up some fresh fillets.

Deep-fried

Put a few tablespoons of all-purpose flour in a plastic bag, add salt and pepper, to taste, and a blend of your favourite spices. For example, I use various combinations of onion and garlic powders, dill seed, peppercorn, oregano, paprika and thyme. You can also use store-bought seasoning spices such as McCormick’s Lemon & Pepper, Old Bay Seasoning, Cavender’s All Purpose Greek Seasoning or Mrs. Dash Original Seasoning Blend, which also works well with grilled fish. (Note: these same spices can also be added to the fillets cooked in foil.) Next, place the cubed fish in the bag and dredge with the flour mixture. Add a ½ inch of vegetable oil (or canola) to a cast iron skillet and heat over the campfire coals until it bubbles. Place the dredged fillets in the oil in small batches, and deep-fry for a few minutes; they’ll turn golden brown and flake when they’re ready.

Grilled

Place fillets skin-side down on a grill over a bed of hot coals, then season with your favourite spices. I’ve also used Knorr’s Herb & Garlic marinade, as well as salad dressings such as Hidden Valley’s Original Ranch or Kraft’s Catalina. Next, cover the fillets with foil or an aluminum roasting pan and grill for about 15 minutes. You can also place the fillets inside a hand-held grill to cook them over the coals, turning them every 2 to 3 minutes.

Baked

Spread pre-cut hash browns and a diced Spanish onion on a large double layer of foil; top with a layer of well-seasoned, cubed fillets, then add 2 cans of sliced mushrooms, 1 can of cream of mushroom soup and ¼ cup of butter. Fold the foil over top of everything and roll up the edges to ensure a tight seal. Place fish-side down on a grill over a bed of hot coals. Bake until the foil puffs out—about 20 minutes total—turning the package every 2 to 3 minutes (use gloves). Open up, dish up and eat up.

Sides

Deep-fried sliced potatoes—or pre-cut hash brown potatoes and sliced onions, fried in butter or vegetable oil—are a standard shorelunch side dish, along with cans of pork and beans and creamed corn, heated on a grill. Almost any brand of beans or corn does the job for me. I’m usually famished by the time the chow’s ready, what with all the fresh air, and looking for a calories fix.

I enjoy either iced tea, cold beer or steaming hot coffee when feasting on a shorelunch, depending on what the weather’s doing. I’ve even been known to have a dram of Scotch on occasion to toast the cook. Then it’s time to kick back and enjoy whatever goes for dessert while the scent of wood smoke hangs in the air.

Marinate and grill

Marinate your red meat for anywhere from two hours to one day—the longer the better. For fish, marinate for four hours tops. Use a very hot grill, making sure not to cook any red meat beyond medium rare; any more than that and wild game meat will dry out, since it has so little natural fat to help keep it moist.

Pan-sear with sauce

Sear meat or fish on high heat, again being careful not to overcook any red meat. Remove from pan, and deglaze using the ingredients listed in the chart.

Roast

With fish or fowl, stuff the body cavity, or make sauce depending on the game and the ingredients listed in the chart. Bacon strips laid on top of upland birds and waterfowl help keep them moist while roasting.

Cooking tips

• It’s important not to over-cook your venison if you want tender meat. Medium rare is ideal, and anything beyond that will make the meat, which is very lean, tough to chew. —Brad Fenson

• Venison fat is bad news. It sticks to the roof of your mouth and tastes like bathtub caulking. It also turns rancid very quickly. The typical butcher will process your deer by making transverse cuts with a band saw, depositing powdered bone and fat residue all through the meat. Your venison will taste much better if you butcher it yourself, trim off the fat and bone out the meat. Do this is by making longitudinal rather than transverse cuts, separating each bundle of muscle and peeling off the layers of fat. The shoulder, in particular, requires this sort of careful handling—and it’s most often the meat that ends up destined for the sausage maker. The bundles of muscle on the front end of the deer are more stringy and narrow than the meat in the hindquarters, but if you invest some time you’ll get up to a dozen pounds of prime red meat that’s ideal for making sausage. —Jake MacDonald

Still have wild turkey in the freezer? Try one of these recipes and read these tips from our sibling site, cottagelife.com.

• Grilled Turkey
• Grilling techniques for large birds
• Turkey tips and cooking time

A northern fishing adventure just wouldn’t be complete without the promise of a delicious, well-earned shorelunch. “A lot of my long-term return guests find the shorelunch to be a highlight of the day,” agrees Tony Jeffers, a guide at Great Bear Lake Lodge in the Northwest Territories. So, just how special are these northern feasts? To find out, we asked four top fishing guides to share their culinary secrets.