I have never eaten any catfish that large. I assume you have a specific cleaning technique for big river cats.
They are tasty if cleaned properly and fixed right, a tad more fatty but pretty good. nowhere near a Flathead or yellowcat as some call them but damn good. its all in the cleaning and prepping. gotta get rid of the red meat veins.
Used to run bank lines on a large creek as a kid with my grandfather, fishing for big cats. Anything over the ~10lb mark, he'd chop the end of their tail off, hang 'em by their lower jaw & bleed 'em out. Pretty sure he trimmed out the red meat, but can't remember definitely. I can tell you we ate a LOT of catfish & I don't recall any of it ever having a muddy or "fishy" flavor.
