The few times I have had tilapia out of the pond they were good. I found the meat to be not nearly as dry as the store bought fish. Any body else find it this way?
With tilapia you have to be able to catch them. After trying for hours to get one on a hook, you'll be ready to eat, so of course it will taste good.
Why are they so hard to catch? I have been messing with the tilapia in an aquarium for a while now. You watch them at feeding time and they go into a frenzy, as they will in a pond when pellets are thrown out. But they have this scary sense of what goes in their mouth: is it good, bad, different. I imagine a lot of fish are this way, but I come to really appreciate how the tilapia do it. They seems to suck everything in, but then let it roll around in their mouth and analyze it. I've witness them pick up the smallest things floating around in the water and spit it out at the slightest notion. They suck up mouths full of stones, carry them over to another area and spit them out(nest building). Then when they have a mouth full of eggs, they roll them around inside to keep them healthy. I have read that if any of the eggs are not fertilized, they can sense this and will swallow those and not the good ones. Then those little fry start swimming around in their mouth, not being swallowed either. Seems like extreme dexterity and control to me.
So....., with trying to get one on a hook, it will be a challenge. I have found that when I do, they are pretty feisty and fun, and yes, good to eat.
