Please eat BASS!

[J Francho]

On 4/16/2016 at 8:36 AM, WRB said:

We call those fillet!

Tom

My friend Tim Kelly from England pronounces it "FILL-it."

[BillyBassMaster]

On April 15, 2016 at 8:24 AM, Catt said:

What's the point if your gonna eat bass eat  walleye and panfish not the fish we would all like to catch and have fun out on the water with. #catchandrelease

[Freak78]

Only thing edible around here is stocked trout. There are cosumption warnings at every body of water I fish.

[Bass newb]

I don't approve of this. I have and may in the future eat bass, I discourage the promotion of the practice.

Bass are to be game fished for catch and release enjoyment imo.

[Catt]

6 hours ago, BillyBassMaster said:

What's the point if your gonna eat bass eat  walleye and panfish not the fish we would all like to catch and have fun out on the water with. #catchandrelease

Because my Biologist said to remove a certain amount from the lake!

I'll take his opinion over y'all

[scaleface]

4 hours ago, Bass newb said:

I don't approve of this. I have and may in the future eat bass, I discourage the promotion of the practice.

Bass are to be game fished for catch and release enjoyment imo.

LOL . OK . 

[N Florida Mike]

I am a big fish eater.Probably my favorite.in fresh water is butter cats, then bream , then bass.Fried, of course.I don't keep bass over 15 inch unless they die on me.Small, fileted bass taste good to me.We have to keep some so the lake won't be overpopulated.I also eat lots of saltwater fish, with sheepshead probably my favorite.

[ww2farmer]

Fish I like to eat:

#1 Bluegills/Pumpkinseeds

#2 Yellow perch

#3 Rock bass

#4 Largemouth

Fish that taste like crap to me

#1 Smallmouth

#2 Crappies

#3 bullheads

#4 Trout

#5 Salmon

 

Everything I keep and eat gets battered and fried...........other than fillet size, I am hard pressed to tell much difference between largemouth, rock bass and bluegills. Perch are firmer. I have tried smallmouth twice. Both times were small keeper sized fish, prepared the same way, caught out of the same body of water, and both times were not good, kind of mushy and blah..........they reminded me of crappies.........which I don't like either.

 

 

[livemusic]

17 hours ago, Bass newb said:

I don't approve of this. I have and may in the future eat bass, I discourage the promotion of the practice.

Bass are to be game fished for catch and release enjoyment imo.

You just rewrote the book on fisheries health. If nobody ever kept bass, there would be an overpopulation of them. In the south, anyway. As for me, however, I prefer to keep only smaller ones, let the others grow bigger.

[wnspain]

On 4/15/2016 at 2:58 PM, J Francho said:

We eat walleye, king salmon, coho (silver) salmon, steelhead, brown trout, yellow perch, walleye, northern pike, and smelt.  All are far superior to any crappie, bass, or sunfish.

There's nothing wrong with crappie, or sunfish for that matter. I personally don't care for the taste of bass so I release all. 

[livemusic]

BTW, I don't know what it is now, but back in its heyday, on Toledo Bend, there was no limit on bream and we would catch HUNDREDS per day of large ones during the spawn. And many a boat would do that. Maybe even crappie had no limit there for a while. I think bass was 15/day. Lakes can surely become overpopulated or out of balance with little fish.

[N Florida Mike]

To be more specific, my favorite bream is redbreast.I don't overly care for Crappie( specks to us Floridians).To me they taste kind of bland.Probably the worst freshwater fish to me is warmouth.We caught a bunch of them in the Okefenokee swamp and they weren't good at all.Of course, they were all eaten

But if you want to eat bass, go ahead.I think its almost comical that people get offended by that.As long as you're legal, then its perfectly fine.I fished my lake for 15 years when I was young and kept nearly every bass and we always had plenty.And for those of you who don't like to eat them that's fine with me.I am opposed now to keeping bigger bass just because they're fun to catch and I hate destroying them .I know how I feel when people tell me they keep big bass out of the lake.I don't like it a'tall.But if I spend my time and money to fish and want to keep a few then its my right.

[avidone1]

15 hours ago, Catt said:

Because my Biologist said to remove a certain amount from the lake!

I'll take his opinion over y'all

I guess your lake is over populated with bass, so you need to cull some.

My home lake seems pretty balanced i.e. a nice balance of small, midlin, and big bass as well as other species.

I wonder what a fisheries biologist would tell us regarding the overall health of our local system?

Personally, I practice catch and release but like I said earlier,  I will keep and eat one or two bass a year

 

[Catt]

26 minutes ago, avidone1 said:

I guess your lake is over populated with bass, so you need to cull some.

My home lake seems pretty balanced i.e. a nice balance of small, midlin, and big bass as well as other species.

I wonder what a fisheries biologist would tell us regarding the overall health of our local system?

Personally, I practice catch and release but like I said earlier,  I will keep and eat one or two bass a year

 

This lake is stocked with F1 Tiger bass & is only 3 yes old!

Growth rates of any strain of largmouthbass are first limited by food. Most bass management experts agree that availability of proper size forage is the key to rapid growth for all bass. In well-managed lakes and ponds in the Southeast, Tiger Bass have shown consistent growth rates, often exceeding 2 pounds per year. The majority of these lakes are well fertilized and have both bluegill and threadfin shad as a forage base. There is an established pattern of exceptional growth from Georgia to Texas, where Tiger Bass are documented gaining 2.5 to 3 pounds per year. American Sportfish web site

[RichF]

I have a degree in Biology and have worked in the environmental field for 8 years conducting scientific studies and monitoring projects.  What I've learned....you can't always believe what Mr. Scientist says.  What most people don't understand is that many of these fisheries biologists making decisions/suggestions about our sport don't even fish!  I've sat through lectures given by some of upstate New York's fisheries biologists regarding bass health in the state's northern waters.  All I can say is that the majority of the public will believe anything these people say if they "back it up" with a couple of statistics and charts.  In reality, sample sizes are always too low, data collection techniques are often weak, and there are far too many variables present to draw definitive conclusions. 

I wonder what our bodies of water were like before fisheries biologists started "managing" them. The "take the smaller fish out" mentality probably works for small ponds/lakes (if you want to grow bigger bass) but I'm not so sure about larger bodies of water.  I feel like these larger ecosystems balance themselves out for the most part. 

I'm a big proponent of catch and release and cringe when I see people keep bass.  But if you're abiding by the laws and only keeping the legal limit, I won't judge...I'll still be a little ticked though.    

[J Francho]

2 hours ago, wnspain said:

There's nothing wrong with crappie, or sunfish for that matter.

Except they taste like crap compared to walleye, jack perch, and salmon.

[Bass newb]

2 hours ago, livemusic said:

You just rewrote the book on fisheries health. If nobody ever kept bass, there would be an overpopulation of them. In the south, anyway. As for me, however, I prefer to keep only smaller ones, let the others grow bigger.

It's silly to think that bass would "overpopulate". They would only populate to the available food supply. Bream would still eat their eggs and they'd have to be weary of being eaten themselves by bigger fish. 

[J Francho]

3 minutes ago, Bass newb said:

It's silly to think that bass would "overpopulate".

Actually, it's science, not silly. Especially in smaller, closed systems.

[gardnerjigman]

On Monday, April 18, 2016 at 7:25 AM, J Francho said:

I love it when people say, "you'd like it prepared right," or something similar.  There's also no way to prepare mushrooms, ham, cauliflower, or lamb in any shape or form that will get me to "like" the taste.  Black bass taste gross to me.  Has nothing to do with the prep.  Has to do with my taste buds, bud.

Look up the five fillet method.  Leaves a bit on the bone, which is okay, since I use the carcass to make a fish base for sauces and reductions.

 

On Monday, April 18, 2016 at 7:37 AM, Bluebasser86 said:

I hear the same thing every spring during trout season. Stuff isn't fit for human consumption in my mind. Not only does it taste bad, the texture is horrible. Only reason I keep them is they make good cutbait and I don't need nearly as many as I do with shad, which I imagine them tasting very similar to. 

People have different tastes, it isn't always how something was prepared. 

I'm with yall. I love fish and eat it regularly but I'd rather eat a petrified dog turd than trout. 

The only time I eat bass early in the year if I fish a private lake I have access to. The owner requests I pull 12-15" bass out once or twice a year. It's a spring fed, crystal clear lake. 

[J Francho]

5 minutes ago, gardnerjigman said:

It's a spring fed, crystal clear lake.

This is actually a prime example where a feed and harvest plan would grow some pretty big fish.

[gardnerjigman]

1 minute ago, J Francho said:

This is actually a prime example where a feed and harvest plan would grow some pretty big fish.

Yup. And it works. 

[Catt]

46 minutes ago, RichF said:

I have a degree in Biology and have worked in the environmental field for 8 years conducting scientific studies and monitoring projects.  What I've learned....you can't always believe what Mr. Scientist says.  What most people don't understand is that many of these fisheries biologists making decisions/suggestions about our sport don't even fish!  I've sat through lectures given by some of upstate New York's fisheries biologists regarding bass health in the state's northern waters.  All I can say is that the majority of the public will believe anything these people say if they "back it up" with a couple of statistics and charts.  In reality, sample sizes are always too low, data collection techniques are often weak, and there are far too many variables present to draw definitive conclusions. 

I wonder what our bodies of water were like before fisheries biologists started "managing" them. The "take the smaller fish out" mentality probably works for small ponds/lakes (if you want to grow bigger bass) but I'm not so sure about larger bodies of water.  I feel like these larger ecosystems balance themselves out for the most part. 

I'm a big proponent of catch and release and cringe when I see people keep bass.  But if you're abiding by the laws and only keeping the legal limit, I won't judge...I'll still be a little ticked though.    

Then you should be well aware of what Texas Parks & Wildlife has accomplished through selective harvesting & selective breeding?

[scaleface]

I think that some limits set forth by the Missouri conservation Dept encourage the success of bass that  genetically dont grow big . The lake I fish the most has a fantastic population of fish in the slot 12 to15 inches , but not so much above it . I think , instead of a a slot or a minimum length limit an experimental maximum length limit could be tried . Six fish creel limit,  15 inches and "under" l and only 1 over fifteen would be legal. I would think it would turn into a trophy lake but I'm no biologist .

[RichF]

31 minutes ago, Catt said:

Then you should be well aware of what Texas Parks & Wildlife has accomplished through selective harvesting & selective breeding?

By all means, enlighten me.

[J Francho]

http://tpwd.texas.gov/spdest/visitorcenters/tffc/sharelunker/

1 hour ago, RichF said:

I've sat through lectures given by some of upstate New York's fisheries biologists regarding bass health in the state's northern waters.

These are the same idiots that say there no smallmouth in Lake Ontario, lol.