Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations fish taste like pond smells

Pond is in Calif. central valley and was filled and stocked with LMB, channel cats, blue gill and minnows in 2004. Fed daily with an automatic feeder. It's about 1/2 acre and continuously aerated. Fish are all doing fine. Started catching and eating blue gills and cats 2 years ago; haven't tried eating the LMB. Blue gills and cats tasted great fried or baked. Lately, though they taste like the pond smells. The pond odor isn't bad, rather typical of a healthy pond I think. But when you sit down to eat fish, you want the taste of fish, not the taste you'd get from drinking pond water. I've been swimming in it, so I know how it tastes ... like it smells, in fact.

Is there some way to get rid of the pond taste? Perhaps, some marinade or secret recipe? Or is there something that can be done via pond management?

Calpond,maybe you should quit swimming in your fishes toilet?
Just kidding,I think,IIRC, if you soak it in milk it will get rid of the taste

That's a tough one. If it helps at all, the off taste isn't caused by dirty water or smelly sludge on the bottom.

The odor is usually caused by a type of blue-green algae. You can sometimes see it as a dark green film floating on top of the water, or a green stain line on the banks. Ironically, fish from nice clear water often have the off taste, and fish from constantly muddy water taste great. Aside from muddying up your pond, I don't know how to get rid of the algae. Maybe a copper compound.

I don't think there is any significant blue-green algae. I saw a little bit 2-3 years ago, but none since. The water has a slight green color, presumably due to microscopic green algae, and is clear to a depth of about 3 ft. Pond depth is 12 ft. There is filamentous algae in late spring and early summer. Other plants are lilies, vallisneria, slender pondweed, cattails, and chara. There was a huge mass of floating heart, which we've just eliminated (mechanical removal, no chemicals). The water comes from two sources. In summer, we pump from an irrigation canal. Water in the canal comes from reservoirs in the Coastal Range. When needed in winter, we pump from a well. The amount of water pumped into the pond per year is a little over 3 times its volume.

Off flavor of cleaned fish does not have to be caused by bluegreen algae. Numerous species of other groups of algae can cause flavors in water and fish. Often the flavors are water soluable and can be minimized by soaking the fillets in various concoctions; salty water is a common one.

Cal:

Simple solution...Real Lemon juice. We fry 80-100 lbs of crappie, BG, CC and flathead couple times a year. I do all the final trimming and such, tossing all cleaned filets in a cooler with ice. To 50 lbs of filets, I add maybe 1/2-3/4 cup of Real Lemon to the ice/water mix, for an hour or so, but it doesn't take only a couple minutes to do the job.

Don't over do this stuff...it "cooks" or pickles the fish if it's too strong. REALLY freshens up the fish. Do it right, and your hands will have no "fishy" smell, even after draining and breading all them fish.

It works...and personally I don't even care all that much for fish.

Do a search for methyl isoborneol (MIB) and geosmin, which are compounds produced by certain species of cyanobacteria and blue green algae.