Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Sunfish-Including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass LMB-it's what's for dinner

Followed closely by muskie.

Never had muskie.

n8ly claims it's good, but that dude eats anything!!!

Dipped in seasoned beer batter and fried in peanut oil, followed by a few beers, and honestly I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between WE, YP, BG and CP. I feel you all deserve the truth, as shameful as it may be-please forgive me.

Is this one about eating size?

Perfect!

For the record, never eaten muskie either. Much better options out there.

...a guy taught and schooled me that LMB is much better to eat when you cut the gill plates loose and bleed them out really well prior to filleting and eating. Yum Yum. Try it you'll like it.

1 - Walleye
2 - Bluegills
3 - Crappies/Perch
4 - Large and small faced bass

Funny because that was the way I was taught to clean LMB!

Bleeding any fish leads to better eating. I used to bleed all of my salmon and walleyes and put them on ice right away. Leads to real nice firm and clean fillets. I don't have my own boat anymore and haven't been able to convince my buddies to bleed fish.

Bleeding any fish leads to better eating. I used to bleed all of my salmon and walleyes and put them on ice right away. Leads to real nice firm and clean fillets. I don't have my own boat anymore and haven't been able to convince my buddies to bleed fish.

Dang, lassig! You didn't have to say it twice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If it's important, sometimes you need to say it twice!

Gosh, there are hardly any fish I don't enjoy. Very importantly, I agree with the above posts about bleeding the fish, and getting it on ice as soon as possible.

Cleaning also has a lot to do with it. No matter what kind of fish, almost all have a blood-line that runs with the lateral line. After skinning a fillet,, cut out the blood line.

IMO, feed has some consequences. The LMB I regularly caught as a kid on our NW Wisconsin farm, and in many close-by lakes, tasted something like a combination between cedar boughs and pine boughs. I learned that there are many great ways to beat that.

I was instructed by many great mentors, that there was almost no fish or game that couldn't be made delicious.

I regularly fished the upper Brule River trout area, where we caught a lot of red horse sucker fish - they became incredible smoked-fish spread.

LMB that tasted like pine trees become delicious by soaking them for a few hours in in a combination of some salt and buttermilk. To this day, we cut the filets into finger/nugget size pieces, spicy batter them, and fry them at 220 degrees F., until they are golden brown. They disappear almost immediately when served. This also works with gutted smelts and sliced lamprey.

I do it in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Michigan, Virginia, and West Virginia. Nobody ever complains -- until we run out.

Anyway, properly prepared, most fish and animals can become very tasty.

As for Dave Davidson's wild goats and boar hogs -- I'm not so sure. Those are critters I've tried many ways, but never conquered. Old male goats and old male pigs, just don't ever seem to be edible.

Good eatin'
Ken

Sorry Sunil. I shouldn't post while I am in a warm phone conversation with a customer. But it is so good it should be repeated. To add more detail what I would do is cut the gills and make a cut right before the tail. I would them place the fish in a live well with the water running. Once the fish was bleed out I would place them in a cooler with ice. Another nice side affect of this is cleaning the fish is a much nice job with very little to no blood present.

We fillet all fish under 12", part of our management plan. Fried is awesome, and we've come to love fish tacos!!

LMB only, we aren't taking many BG's.

"...there was almost no fish or game that couldn't be made delicious."

Ken's words to live by as evidenced by the heated brawl between Todd and I for the last of the jellied pig's knuckles.....

In the mid 70's I had some WE that came from the Wisconsin River directly downstream from a paper mill. No way could they be made edible.

Ever chow down on a baked possum or racoon that was older than Methuselah? You know you're in for it when the cook has to stop and empty the nearly overflowing baking dish of its "juices" approx 9 times during the cooking process....out of respect for those who haven't had dinner yet this evening, I will refrain from trying to describe the smell.

Young ones aren't too awful bad....but not too awful good either, unless you're starving and stranded somewhere. And you're only other option is to eat dirt. And you can't find any dirt.

Tony, I get that for sure. Also, don't let anyone tell you a javelina is swine. We smoked one all night on a mule deer hunt, and I thought we were going to have to power wash the smoker before we could use it again.

Great rankings teejaeh57, my favorites are just the opposite of yours. For salt-water, Orange Roughy (sp) 1st. Now, I have to stop and think ( I don't have salt-water fish very often) ... But I do have a big freezer shelf full of the 4 you mentioned.

Sunil and friends -- I'm not as old as DD, but I'm not too far behind. In all these years, I've sampled a lot of foods and liquids, on all continents, and on many islands.

Some have been good, a few have been awful.

For other Navy and sea-going dudes/dudettes -- to make it across certain borders usually requires a fun-loving ceremony. I went across the the equator and international dateline simultaneously. The last step of making it to the real party, was to suck (and eat) an olive and a sardine from the hairy belly buttons of a pair of US Navy chiefs.

Thankfully, I like both olives and sardines, and I like swimming in a very clear and blue ocean.

There are a lot of great foods and drinks. There are also a lot of really bad foods and drinks.

Think about the TV series by Andrew Zimmern and Bizarre Foods. He and I could have been food twins.

How many other Golden Shellbacks are out there? Any Blue Noses?

Cat,
You are tough! Every time I've see the Bizarre foods show I have to turn it off because something he eats starts to turn my stomach

Shellback here...never made it up to Blue Nose country. I just visited an old Navy buddy who made a career out of it - he'll retire as a O-4 in a year or so, last duty station is the CHENG on the USS New York - that's the one they used steel from the Twin Towers to lay the keel. He's been literally darn near everywhere. Most stories he tells makes me feel like a pollywog all over again.

The WI river has gotten MUCH better, but still carries a stigma about it. Kind of like bass and pike with many people. My Brother caught a lot of walleye on the WI and gave away to a guy he knew. This guy was more than happy to have them until he got a bad one. Best described as being "soft" he claimed it stunk up the house, ruined his fresh oil, and from that day forward he said he didn't need any more fish from the river...

What we really need to do here in the upper Midwest is popularize carp fishing and get people eating them.

I've got a neighbor that is a fisheries biologist for the state. He told me that's something they're working on here...trying to get a cannery put in to process the Asian Carp (silver) and develop a market for them. Apparently if you can get past the bones they aren't too bad?