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.
We do the same, anything over 10 12 lbs we let them bleed out good, We have also theorized how much firmer and better meat a river cat has then a lake cat, especially the bigger, older ones, seems like the currents or something must keep them more active or something maybe, the lake caught catfish seem to be even fattier, and the meat was more mushy, not as solid, firm.
All the really good ideas I've ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
