Product Description
Skadar Lake bleak is the most significant sweet water fish in Montenegro. It is a small type of fish, most commonly described as a freshwater sardine. It can be consumed in several ways – as deep fried when fresh, or as smoked. As with Skadar Lake carp, the high quality and specific taste of this fish’s meat comes from the fact that it is caught from its wild habitat where it spends the lifecycle in unpolluted waters feeding on natural food sources.
This particular type is a subspecies endemic to Skadar Lake, and together with carp, has for centuries been a basis for the economy of local fishermen communities. It is a gregarious fish, and large schools of it migrate to specific locations in Skadar Lake, called oka, in order to overwinter. These are places where sublacustrine springs discharge into the lake, so the water is exceptionally fresh and clean. The fish is caught at those places by encircling the school with large seine nets dropped from the boats, which are then dragged to the coast. This fishing method requires lots of skill and a cooperation and coordination between several fishermen.
The southern coast of Skadar Lake, where most of oka are located, are dotted with little fishermen settlements. Now abandoned, once they were places where fishermen would aggregate to catch and preserve fish by salting or drying it.
Bleak extraction has been for the past years been the subject of concessions for the purposes of commercial exploitation by enterprises. However, small amounts of bleak are caught by local people who mostly smoke it and eat or sell it preserved in such a way.
In the 19th century, the meat of this fish was highly valued on the Austrian court, where they called it the Skadar Lake sardine. Large volumes of caught fish were exported to Austria at the time, because of the high demand.
There are several ways of preparaing the Skadar lake bleak:
- Deep fried – whole fresh bleak is salted and then deep fried in hot oil for some 10 minutes until crispy. They are consumed whole as a snack.
- Dried bleak – a long string is pierced through bleaks heads, so that some 20-30 are stacked. Such strings are hung above the fire and smoked. The dried fish can be consumed as such, marinated and prepared as a salad or deep fried.
Skadar Lake bleak is the most significant sweet water fish in Montenegro. It is a small type of fish, most commonly described as a freshwater sardine. It can be consumed in several ways – as deep fried when fresh, or as smoked. As with Skadar Lake carp, the high quality and specific taste of this fish’s meat comes from the fact that it is caught from its wild habitat where it spends the lifecycle in unpolluted waters feeding on natural food sources.
In the 19th century, the meat of this fish was highly valued on the Austrian court, where they called it the Skadar Lake sardine. Large volumes of caught fish were exported to Austria at the time, because of the high demand.
