Trout are out of season right now on Florida’s east coast, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fresh trout for dinner. It all depends on what you think the meaning of “fresh” is.

Living and fishing on the Indian River I have a pretty high standard for “fresh.” Generally it means the fish is still alive when I return to the dock. A quick whack to the head with a small billy club sends the fish to Never Never Land. It’s gutted and then heads either straight for the sauté pan, oven or grill, or gets tucked into the meat compartment of the refrigerator (scales and skin still firmly attached) until dinner time the next night or, at the longest, the one after. Thus I eat no fish beyond its time.

But even when trout or other fish are out of season, I can enjoy the next best thing to freshest by thawing out a package of vacuum-packed frozen filets that originally went into the freezer within hours of being caught. A fried filet that has been vacuum packed and frozen for a few months is awfully hard to tell from a filet from a just-caught fish. Plain old freezing without the benefit of the vacuum will get the job done for up to a month, but with the trout season closed for longer than a month, the vacuum packing approach is best.

Two things happen in the freezer that lead to less-than-pristine filets if you don’t use vacuum freezing or similar methods. First, the low humidity of the freezer extracts moisture from the meat, leading eventually to freezer burn. More importantly, though, the fats present in fish flesh that is exposed to air oxidize, creating 'off' tastes that anyone can recognize as less-than-fresh fish. That’s a bigger problem for fish with high fat content, like tuna and mackerel, but it affects even lean fish like trout.

There are a different ways to achieve the vacuum effect. For a long time I simply put my filets in a zip-lock bag, slowly immersed it in a sink full of water to drive out the air (keeping the seal just out of the water, of course) then zipped it up and froze it. That gets about 90% of the air out. You can also use a soda straw to draw out a lot of air by inserting the straw into one end of the closure inhaling deeply to withdraw air.

Another method for protecting filets from air is to glaze them: dipping them into a bowl of water,  then freezing them and repeating the process several times to form an ice barrier around the meat. Just be aware that the barrier begins evaporating as soon as the filets are stored in the freezer and will generally disappear within a few weeks unless you keep repeating the process.

Eventually, though, I discovered the FoodSaver vacuum packaging system. It uses a vacuum pump with a heating element. First it withdraws air from special thermoplastic packaging material, then it seals the end by melting a strip of the packaging material. The manufacturer of the system claims you can store fish for two years with no freezer burn, but I never intend to have two years' worth of fish in my freezer in any case. I only use the system to prepare for the off-season of my favorite fish.

Fresh fried fish is best, but vacuum sealed filets run a close second.