Fishing for survival in a power outage

The daily rule

Cook what you catch before the day is over.

Gut it, cook it through, and eat it. A grill, a pan, or a pot is the whole method. Federal food guidance uses 145 degrees Fahrenheit for fish. The flesh turns opaque and flakes. A fish caught at 90 degrees with no ice is dinner tonight. It is not a stockpile.

Fish is protein. It does not replace rice, beans, oats, oil, and salt. A house that already has those calories can put a fresh fish on top. A house that has only a rod, and no stored food, does not have a plan. Lean fish alone will not carry a person’s calories.

Most days there should be no extra. Salt only what will not be eaten that day, and only if the salt is already in the house. Do not eat a fish that washed up dead. During red tide, do not eat oysters, clams, or mussels. Cooking does not remove that toxin. The red tide guide and the FWC red tide page are the ones to read before keeping a fish from a bloom.

The food tool

A cast net fills a meal. A rod waits for a bite.

A rod belongs in the kit for a dock or a bank when nothing is schooling. A cast net is the food tool. One throw can fill a meal when the fish are there.

• Learn on a net of 6 to 8 feet. A 10- or 12-foot net feeds more once the throw is reliable. Bigger than that mostly tangles a beginner.
• Florida’s recreational maximum is 14 feet of stretched length. Measure from the horn at the center to the lead line, with the net pulled taut.
• One net if the person is on foot. No more than two nets from a boat. A county can be tighter. The FWC gear page wins.
• Rinse the mesh with fresh water when the day is done. Salt left in the net rots it. A rotten net is not a backup.

A net that has never been thrown does not become dinner because the power went out. Practice on ordinary weekends.

Where the fish are

A random throw into a still pond is the same as not fishing.

Look for mullet flipping, bait showering, or a grass edge on a moving tide. Mullet school, and they show themselves on the surface. Shrimp are the other volume catch a net can throw. A rod does not throw shrimp.

After a storm, the first line of shore water and the canals are often sewage and fuel. This feeds a household that can reach clean-enough water. It does not feed a whole city. Mercury is the long-game limit, not the one-week limit. Florida Health tells women who may become pregnant, and young children, to go easy on shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish, and to keep largemouth bass, bowfin, and gar to a rare meal. A few meals of ordinary fish in a short outage are a different case from a summer of nothing but big bass.

What the net is for

Mullet is dinner. The bag is 50 per person.

FWC’s recreational mullet rule, as published for striped, silver, fantail, and redeye mullet, sets no recreational minimum size and a daily bag of 50 fish per person. From September 1 through January 31 the vessel limit is 50 mullet. From February 1 through August 31 it is 100. Parts of Pinellas County have a tighter seasonal bag. Parts of Charlotte County have night closures. Confirm the current page. Those local rules are easy to miss.

Recreational cast nets and seines, as the gear rule publishes them, may be used for black drum, bluefish, cobia, flounder, mullet, Florida pompano, red drum, sheepshead, shrimp, Spanish mackerel, weakfish, and unregulated species. Every regulated fish still has its own size and bag. A cast net is not a pass on those limits. Snook and spotted seatrout are not on that gear list. If the species is unclear, put it back.

Shrimp have their own current bag on the FWC shrimp page. The net is the tool. The page is the number.

Practice while the lights are on

A license on an ordinary weekend is how the throw gets real.

In ordinary times a Florida saltwater fishing license is required unless an exemption on the FWC page fits. Catch-and-release is still fishing. Residents who fish only from shore can look at the no-cost shoreline license. Fees and exemptions are on the fishing-license guide. A first beach trip with a rod is on the surf-fishing guide.

Practice on legal fish, on a legal net, while a ranger and a bait shop are both open. The outage is a bad day to learn the throw.

Only the extra

Salt and dry what will not be eaten today.

A brine by itself does not preserve fish. A sealed jar of raw fish is how people get botulism. Fish can carry that organism, and it can grow in a closed container when the fridge is down. Leave the cure open to the air.

• Gut the fish as soon as it comes out of the water. Take out the guts and the gills. Split any fish bigger than a hand so the flesh is thin. Rinse the blood off.
• Use canning or pickling salt, bought before the storm. Food and Agriculture Organization guidance uses about 1 pound of salt for every 3 pounds of cleaned fish. A kitchen shaker will not do this.
• Put a thick layer of salt in a plastic bucket, a glass crock, or a stainless pot. Lay the fish skin side up, not touching. Cover every surface with salt. Repeat. End with salt on top. A loose cover keeps flies out. Do not seal the lid.
• When the flesh is firm, rinse the loose salt off and dry the pieces in moving air, out of the rain, until they are stiff. Thin pieces dry. Thick wet chunks rot first. This takes days.
• Florida humidity puts water back into dried fish. Bag it only after it is actually dry. If it feels damp again, put it back in the air.
• Soak the salt out and cook it before anyone eats it.

A sour smell, slime, fuzzy mold, or a pink film means it is spoiled. Throw it out. Do not taste it to check.

A pressure canner is not the basic plan. Almost nobody has a tested canner, pint jars, new lids, and enough fuel for the USDA process. If the canner is not already in the house, eat the fish today. An Instant Pot is not a canner. Someone who already owns a real pressure canner follows the National Center for Home Food Preservation fish process and does not shorten it.

The outage around the fishing

Heat is the peninsula problem. The fridge clock is short.

A northern grid-down plan is about freezing for months. That is not the peninsula. A closed block house with no air conditioning can overheat after the wind has already passed. North Florida and the Panhandle can still freeze. A blanket and one warm room belong in a Tallahassee or Jacksonville kit. They are not the plan in Miami, Tampa, or Melbourne.

• Stay in the shade. Open the windows at night if it is safe. Cover them by day.
• Drink before thirst. Stop if someone is dizzy, sick to the stomach, or stops sweating. That is a medical emergency.
• A battery fan is a tool. A whole-house air conditioner on a tiny solar kit is a fantasy.

These are the federal food-safety times. They assume the door stays shut.

• A refrigerator holds about 4 hours.
• A full freezer holds about 48 hours. A half-full freezer holds about 24 hours.
• Meat, fish, milk, eggs, soft cheese, leftovers, and cooked rice at 40 degrees or warmer for more than 2 hours get thrown out.
• A frozen item that still has ice crystals, or is still at 40 degrees or below, can be cooked or refrozen. When the temperature is unknown, throw it out.
• Cook the freezer down on a grill outside on day one if that can be done safely. Do not run a grill in the house or in the garage.

Water, because the fish is not a drink

Stored water first. The pool is not on the list.

Broward County hurricane guidance calls for at least 1 gallon of drinking water per person per day for 3 to 5 days. Cooking, washing, pets, and the heat take more. Bought water, and a clean bathtub filled before the wind, are the supply. Rain caught before it touches a dirty roof is the next source.

• Boil clear water at a rolling boil for 1 minute, then cool it. Florida is not high altitude. Boiling is the method that covers viruses.
• If boiling is impossible, use unscented household bleach with 5% to 9% sodium hypochlorite and nothing else in the bottle. Follow the label’s drinking-water line if it has one.
• If the label has no drinking-water line, CDC’s amount for that bleach is 8 drops per gallon of clear water, or 2 drops per quart. A little less than 1/8 teaspoon per gallon is the spoon version. Cloudy water gets strained through a clean cloth, then double the bleach. Stir. Wait 30 minutes. It should smell slightly of chlorine. If it does not, repeat the dose once and wait another 15 minutes. Do not keep adding bleach after that. Never mix bleach with ammonia or another cleaner.
• A hollow-fiber straw is for clear lake or river water. It takes out bacteria and parasites. It does not remove salt, fuel, or pool chemicals. The maker’s own instructions exclude salt water, brackish water, and pool water.
• Green, paint-like, or foul water stays undrunk. Florida Health says not to drink a blue-green algae bloom and not to cook with it. Boiling does not remove that toxin and can concentrate it.
• The ocean, brackish water, a canal after a flood, and a swimming pool are not drinking water.

Before June

Buy it while the stores are open.

• Drinking water, at least 1 gallon per person per day for 3 to 5 days, and more if it fits.
• Rice, beans or oats, oil, and several pounds of canning salt.
• A 6- to 8-foot cast net, and a simple rod as the slow backup. Practice both.
• Unscented bleach, 5% to 9% sodium hypochlorite, in a bottle someone has actually read.
• A hollow-fiber straw, for clear fresh water only.
• This PDF, printed, in a zip bag.
• A charged power bank, a battery fan, a way to cook outside, and the medicines the house already uses.