Gasconade Fun

[Wayne SW/MO]

The only person I knew who cleaned gar was on the Grand before Truman. He used metal shears to cut the skin.

[Mitch f]

The Chinese never fillet a fish, they will cook a gar or carp, pretty much anything that swims. They just pick at the carcass with their chopsticks and before you know it....perfect skeleton.

[LittleRedFisherman]

Buffalo ribs are awesome! I used to help a neighbor of mine commercial fish when I was a teenager, he'd catch 100's of pounds of buffalo at a time in the St. Francis. The best was what we call the Razorback buffalo, not sure the real name, but it had the small hump on it. When he'd fish for himself, he'd keep those and throw the other buffalo back in the water. We'd have big fish frys with flathead and buffalo ribs, and those ribs held up to the flathead for me! Think I just made myself hungry....

[Al Agnew]

Getting back to the scarred up smallmouth for a minute...you have to keep in mind that this was not a completely healed wound, so it happened sometime during the winter. I pointed out slightly tongue in cheek that there isn't much chance of it being a heron wound. Same thing applies to bow fishing...that big smallie isn't going to be in water shallow enough to shoot at it with a bow during the winter. And I kinda doubt that the spear-fishermen are out with snorkels during the winter, either.

The other fact is that we catch fish with healed wounds in the summer, fresh wounds in the winter. Hmm.

[Seth]

I figure a sawzall would be the best method, then fillet the meat off the strip of hide.

Rubbery hu? Hadn't heard that. I'm suddenly less ambitious about it than I was before.

It's only after it gets cool. I think gar is delicious, you just gotta eat it warm.

[fishinwrench]

Right on. I always get into a bunch of them during the later part of the White bass run, so I'll process a few of them and see how it goes.

I love gator tail so......

[Wayne SW/MO]

The Swamp People show had a show where the two brothers caught a gar and made gar balls, I believe that's what hey called them. I think it was like trout/salmon patties rolled up and deep fried.