Eating Bass?

[fishinwrench]

1 minute ago, MOPanfisher said:

Bass ain't bad, not much inherent flavor, neednsome seasoning.  I seldom keep them anymore unless fishing for a fish fry at work and having trouble catching anything else.  Almost all bass I catch anymore is a byproduct of walleye or crappie fishing and at that point I am usually just ticked off its a bass.  I couldn't bring myself to fillet a smallie just an ingrained prejudice for me.

That's pretty much my stance as well.  My preferred eating fish is White bass, their meat is cleaner and healthier than anything else that swims around here.

We did a gravel bar fish fry once with Smallies, Green sunfish, and Goggle-eye.  There was no noticable difference in taste or texture so I never knifed another smallmouth after that.  I'd rather have them in the river than in my belly.    

[oneshot]

1 hour ago, fishinwrench said:

That's pretty much my stance as well.  My preferred eating fish is White bass, their meat is cleaner and healthier than anything else that swims around here.

We did a gravel bar fish fry once with Smallies, Green sunfish, and Goggle-eye.  There was no noticable difference in taste or texture so I never knifed another smallmouth after that.  I'd rather have them in the river than in my belly.    

Redhorse is good.

I eat Catfish even though they are unclean.

oneshot

[fishinwrench]

I don't believe any of them will hurt you, but when given the choice I'll pick the ones that don't live very long, spend most of their time on the move in open water, and spend the least amount of time scrubbing along the bottom.  

[snagged in outlet 3]

We had some Costco walleye last night that was great!  Cat last week.  I don't think I've eaten a bass, definitely not a smallie.  One of my wife's friends would keep under sized largies out of LOZ and let them die on a stringer.   

[fishinwrench]

@oneshot how do you prepare and cook your trout?   You seem to like them ok.  

[Quillback]

2 hours ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

We had some Costco walleye last night that was great!  Cat last week.  I don't think I've eaten a bass, definitely not a smallie.  One of my wife's friends would keep under sized largies out of LOZ and let them die on a stringer.   

Couple of the lakes here in Bella Vista are overpopulated with 10-12" largemouth, they are pretty tasty, on a par with walleye, crappie.  

I'll keep a few walleye and a striper or two, and some bluegill, and that will do me for a year as far as fish.  

Sam's sells some fresh salmon rolls stuffed with some kind of shrimp stuffing, it's pretty good.  

I have eaten wild trout, hatchery trout, trout from rivers, trout from lakes - I don't think it's much better wherever it comes from.

 

 

 

[top_dollar]

Bass taste pretty great to me.  Generally, IMO, bluegill and crappie are much easier to catch, taste about the same, and are more plentiful/sustainable (in terms of biomass/acre of water).  That said, as was mentioned before, bass in a small body of water tend to be quite prolific and will require some harvest.  Also, massive fisheries like the huge reservoirs have fast growing bass populations and can handle significant harvest.  I agree with the bias of not cutting a smallmouth bass, but really I only feel that way about large smallmouth in the rivers where there is just not that many fish.  I have no problems cutting a smallmouth out of table rock or stockton, if its a 15-16 inch bass its going on ice no matter what brand. 

[oneshot]

On 1/5/2020 at 3:01 PM, fishinwrench said:

@oneshot how do you prepare and cook your trout?   You seem to like them ok.  

Take fillet them leaving Skin on, roll in mix of Cornmeal, Flour, Salt and Pepper. Fry them.

Sometimes I just made Sandwiches.

oneshot

[FishnDave]

I don't keep fish to eat anymore.  I'd rather just enjoy catching them and then let them go.

I grew up keeping and eating the fish we caught.  Perch, crappies, bluegills.....more often it was carp, channel catfish and bullheads.  I kept the first 2 smallmouth bass I ever caught....hey, I was probably 11 years old....I've never kept any Smallmouth since.

I used to go fish for walleyes and pike in Canada every-other-year with a small group of guys. We'd eat walleyes and the occasional pike for our dinners while there.  The lake we fished had a rule that you had to release all walleyes over 18"...so we kept 16"-17.5" walleyes for dinner. We learned that 3 filets per person (1.5 fish each) was enough.  Since there were 4 of use, we would only keep 6 walleyes each day.  We'd wait until mid-afternoon before we think about starting to keep any, so they'd be fresher for dinner.  Some of the most delicious fish you can imagine, grilled or fried.  We never brought any back to the states with us.

Kept a couple snapper, sea bass, and a cobia to eat that my wife and I caught on our honeymoon in Florida 26 years ago.  Cobia eat crab, which made for some very tasty fish!

Kept a few skipjack tuna we caught off Maui for some fresh sashimi.  Fantastic!

Kept a smallish Dorado (Mahi Mahi) during a family vacation to Costa Rica a few years back...the resort kitchen prepared it for us...SO GOOD!

Kept 10 or so White Bass from a local reservoir 10 years back.  They cooked up pretty well, after I removed the red-colored meat.

I've kept stocker rainbow trout a few times.  Didn't care much for the flavor, so I stopped keeping them.

In the 18 years I've lived at my current residence, I've never eaten any of the >30,000 fish I've caught from the local public ponds in my town.  I've seen first hand how just one or two people keeping fish can destroy these small waters in a single day.  For example, one pond had a good population of nice bluegills.  During the spawning season, 1 or 2 guys went around the pond and caught the male bluegills off their nests.  You know how easy that is.  The next year I didn't catch a single male bluegill.  When it was spawning season I caught female bluegills so fat with eggs it looked like they'd eaten a golf ball.  But there were no males, and no nests, and no spawn.  The 2nd year after that, I caught a couple males, and the 3rd year there were a few more nests, and it has slowly rebounded since, but the bluegills still aren't as big as they used to be.  And also, I know these local urban public ponds are stormwater detention basins, and are absolutely chock-full of lawn fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide run-off, plus run-off from the streets.  Its not something I'm interested in ingesting.

 

[fishinwrench]

Since trout are raised for put & take in this state you'd think they'd do some science to improve the meat.  

I'm actually blown away that all the trout they raise get kept and eaten because they just aren't very good at all.  I suspect that at least 50% of all stocker trout kept, get thrown in a freezer, then eventually pitched in the trash or fed to cats.