You ever eat a LMB that you catch?

[Dwight Hottle]

1 hour ago, soflabasser said:

In your opinion how do yellow perch compare to crappie or walleye? I have eaten walleye and crappie I have caught, they taste good but I prefer saltwater fish.

I have eaten yellow perch, walleye & crappie. Walleye are flaky white fish liked by almost everyone with little oily or strong taste. Yellow perch are of the same family but smaller in size & a little sweeter in taste. Crappie are similar to perch but slightly bigger fillets & less sweet in taste. 

[GreenPig]

That's all I've got to say about that.

[WRB]

Fish taste different depending on the water quality and prey they eating. 

I grew up at a high altitude trout lake that also has a bass population along with crappie etc. Rainbow trout were good eating until mid summer then not so good. crappie are good year around. 

My inlaws are from MN and Canada where walleye are the favored table fare hands down, they don't eat bass.

Not knowing that I BBQ'd a few bass fillets from our local lakes and they like it, no really like it. We have cold water and the bass taste good.

Tom

[islandbass]

I don’t have the heart to eat a largemouth. I did try smallmouth. I helped an senior lady catch a nice smallie and she took it home. The next day she game me a piece and it was incredible. However, I will credit the taste more to her excellent cooking and seasoning skills. 
 

Just my opinion but salt water fish just seem to taste better and I’ve tried trout (50/50) and catfish too. Don’t know how to classify salmon since they’re anadramous, and I’ve caught them in both fresh and saltwater, lol. 

[Bankc]

I'll eat crappie and walleye that I catch.  Sometimes catfish, but only if I'm fishing a fairly clear lake, as they can taste pretty muddy.  I've eaten bass many times.  But I don't care for it much, and haven't eaten any in decades.  

 

I did fish with a guy once (a friend of a friend) who said LMB we're good if you cooked them right.  We caught a bunch and then he cooked them for us.  They were really good!  He wouldn't give me the recipe, but there were a lot of herbs and spices on the fillets.  Probably some other stuff too.  That was last time I've had LMB and the only time I thought it was good.  So I know it's possible to make them taste good.  But I don't know how.

[AnotherInstanceOfMe]

I was born in USSR. We always felt lack of normal food, it was Socialism as it is, and at 90s, when USSR has fallen, we had nothing in stores literally. Nothing at all, they are were empty. Can you imagine absolutely empty Walmart? We had that  

At that days we ate any fish

So yes, my mom does not understand 'catch and release' conception and my wife as well  If man has a rod he must bring fish home. Period. But I always feel sorry about bass I caught. It faught it best, it is not deserves to end up his life on my dinner table, so I release it

But luckily I have my little one, who helps me to "fix" situation with released bass with couple of bluegills.

[WRB]

A catch and release wasn't a part of bass fishing until the mid 70's. B.A.S.S. Tournament had 10 and 15 bass limits depending on the states regulations and every bass was kept.

Fish fries were part of bass tournaments until public pressure forced a change.

I was a early pioneer of C & R writing Ray Scott that B.A.S.S. Should adopt C & R, his response was bass anglers can't over harvest bass. He was probably right regarding the larger southern reserviors B.A.S.S. tournaments were held on at the time. The perception however of fish fries didn't didn't help the conservation image. B.A.S.S. changed with live release weigh ins and C & R pendelium swung the opposite direction with a cult like following. Selective harvest by In -Fisherman tried to reverse the C & R cult thinking but too little impact. Bass are a renewable resource and need some harvest to balance the population. 

Tom 

[Bluebasser86]

I ate a ton of fish growing up, all kinds. If I caught a keeper bass, it was going home. It always tasted awful, but when you didn't have anything else to eat it sounded better than going hungry. Cow pond bass and channel cat have about the same flavor as the mud the ponds are lined with.

[Hammer 4]

Tried LMB back in the late 70's..Did not care for the taste. Only fresh water fish I eat is trout. Ocean fish, Red Snapper, and Halibut, and sometimes Tuna.

All the Bass I catch go right back in the water.

[Big Hands]

I haven't kept a largemouth bass in over 25 years. If someone else catches one, it's theirs, of course, to do with as they please. But I was fishing so much, that I would have needed a freezer just for the fish I was catching and that wasn't something I wanted to do, and I certainly didn't want to clean fish when I got home at the end of a day. Largemouth are far from the tastiest freshwater gamefish too.

 

I have kept a catfish, striper, bluegill or crappie, but only occasionally. 

 

My daughter has started fishing with me a lot this year and she has mentioned that if I was keeping fish, catching them probably wouldn't appeal to her. That is an easy call for me.

[MGF]

I absolutely LOVE to eat LMB and SMB. Any time I brought fish home as a kid my mother would comment that all she wanted to eat was LMB.

 

Now days I don't keep very many just because local waters seem way over pressured to me and populations just aren't all that impressive. We have a slot limit on the river so a couple times/year my wife and I keep a meal or two worth of little ones.

 

I don't keep many pan fish anymore either. The local pan fish like crappies are so pressured you can't hardly find a decent sized one. The DNR talks like 9 or 10 inches is a decent crappie. Sorry that's a dink.

 

Last year my daughter and her family took us all to a lake cabin for a week for my 60th birthday. I took the grandkids out for crappie and we made a couple of good meals for the family out of those nine and ten inch crappies. I didn't tell the kids the fish were dinks so they had fun anyway.

 

I'm all for selective harvest but that's not what I see. The DNR manages our resources to sell licenses NOT to sustain good fishing and hunting. If they can get you to buy access to lousy fishing they're happy enough.

[Captain Phil]

Unless you catch them out of a clear sand bottom lake, South Florida bass taste like mud. We used to soak them in milk for days to get the taste out. The only way I could tolerate the taste was to cut them into small pieces and fry them in a bucket of hot oil.  If you like to eat fish, I say go to the supermarket and buy some frozen Mahi-Mahi.  

 

I have no problem with folks who keep bass as long as they eat them and obey the law.   What I hate is when someone kills a big bass just so they can walk the bank to show it off.  Thankfully, camera phones have cut back on that practice.

[Dirtyeggroll]

Growing up we would catch a whole stronger full at private ponds and then have a fish fry. I always enjoyed it. 

[JohnFromLisbon]

When I started fishing for bass in my teens I'd bring some of them home and I'd usually fillet and fry them.

About 10 or 12 years ago I read a few articles about catch & release, the benefits to smaller waters and stuff, and decided to start returning every bass I caught with one exception - if I went fishing with my grandad I'd bring one bass home, because he really liked it. The last largemouth bass I harvested must have been in 2015 before he passed away.

 

I'm Portuguese and grew up eating as much fish as I did meat. My dad worked for a big frozen seafood company, so our freezer would always be fully stocked with fish and seafood. Having said that, I like the taste of largemouth but don't really love it, there are much better options out there - European seabass on the grill seasoned with just rock salt is soooo much better.

[Catt]

Yeah I do ?

 

I find it amazing so many of y'all have eaten mud!

[Darth-Baiter]

I also do not trust the waters. In the Delta they spray herbicides on the floating weed mats.  My local lake gets run off the country club grass, etc. Clearlake, isn’t that clear

[KayakJimW]

13 hours ago, NorthernBasser said:

Never. I know this sounds weird, but I can't bring myself to eat them because I respect them too much...

I had the same mindset until a family friend asked for help with his overstocked farm pond. Fish weren't getting any size and needed to be thinned out.  Then later on we had a public lake, Amelia Lake, in a similar situation.  Below is what Dept of Fish and Game said about this Lake, and upped the creel limit from 5 to 25 per person per day! 

I've always figured there's enough folks harvesting bass at my favorite fisheries, that I don't do it.  But luckily there are places I can go catch a meal and feel like I'm helping the fishery

Fishing Opportunities

Largemouth bass

The Amelia Lake largemouth bass population currently exists in a very unbalanced state dominated by high numbers of small fish. Densities of bass collected in our samples (measured in number of fish per hour of electrofishing) reach levels over 500 bass per hour. Normal densities in comparable lakes in the Southeast are much lower at around 100-150 bass per hour. With densities of fish this high, food and other resources become limiting in the system and growth of the fish suffer. The end result is a population of bass over-run with fish around eight to ten inches. To combat this overcrowded bass population, the size limit restriction that was in place at Amelia was lifted to encourage harvest and reduce numbers of bass in the system. Currently there is no size limit in place at Amelia Lake.

[NorthernBasser]

9 minutes ago, KayakJimW said:

I had the same mindset until a family friend asked for help with his overstocked farm pond. Fish weren't getting any size and needed to be thinned out.  Then later on we had a public lake, Amelia Lake, in a similar situation.  Below is what Dept of Fish and Game said about this Lake, and upped the creel limit from 5 to 25 per person per day! 

I've always figured there's enough folks harvesting bass at my favorite fisheries, that I don't do it.  But luckily there are places I can go catch a meal and feel like I'm helping the fishery

Fishing Opportunities

Largemouth bass

The Amelia Lake largemouth bass population currently exists in a very unbalanced state dominated by high numbers of small fish. Densities of bass collected in our samples (measured in number of fish per hour of electrofishing) reach levels over 500 bass per hour. Normal densities in comparable lakes in the Southeast are much lower at around 100-150 bass per hour. With densities of fish this high, food and other resources become limiting in the system and growth of the fish suffer. The end result is a population of bass over-run with fish around eight to ten inches. To combat this overcrowded bass population, the size limit restriction that was in place at Amelia was lifted to encourage harvest and reduce numbers of bass in the system. Currently there is no size limit in place at Amelia Lake.

I didn't say bass should never be kept. I know it's vital for some lakes and overharvest. And I know it's people's rights. I just said personally I can't bring myself to eat bass.

[J Francho]

I've had LMB.  Tastes like barf.  I've had SMB that were delicious.  I don't keep either to eat.

[Finessegenics]

15 hours ago, NorthernBasser said:

Never. I know this sounds weird, but I can't bring myself to eat them because I respect them too much. 

 

I'm 100% catch and release sport fisherman. These fish bring me so much pleasure that I just can even fathom the thought of eating them. The thought of it makes my stomach turn. 

 

And just to be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't be eating them or anything. That's their right as long as they follow the size/limit rules. 

I'm the same way with bass. I know it makes no sense since I do occasionally keep walleye and trout but I just enjoy bass fishing way too much to even keep one. Even from a lake hours and hours away from home. 

[813basstard]

As the water temps cool, they’ll be three or four 1.5 pounders that will bite their last bite. 

Had some this morning with grits and hot sauce. 

[the reel ess]

I will take some from my buddy's dink farm. They're overpopulated and the water comes right out of the ground. So the fish are clean. Largemouth taste a lot better from a clean fishery. I've tried to grill or air fry them. They don't have enough fat for that. So it's deep fried in peanut oil for me. They're good in a stew as well.

[TnRiver46]

22 minutes ago, J Francho said:

I've had LMB.  Tastes like barf.  I've had SMB that were delicious.  I don't keep either to eat.

Those two species taste the same, something was awry 

[TOXIC]

Funny, my daughter and I were just talking about going out for a crappie trip here in the near future.  For those that think crappie is “mushy” you have to catch them after the water cools off.  Preferably after the first hard freeze.  My daughter is a picky eater but she loves crappie.  As for freshwater fish, I have had most everything that swims.  I grew up eating carp sandwiches from Joe Tess’ restaurant in Omaha.  I had shore lunch in Canada cooked by our Indian guide of pike and walleye.  I had catfish nuggets fixed by a fine southern lady that were delicious.  I’ve had smallmouth and largemouth but I’m not a regular eater of them.  If I am going to keep fish for the fryer and freezer that I can catch locally, it’s snakehead, crappie, bluegill, white perch, ring perch, Catfish (if from a clean water source), striper and walleye/sauger (usually stocked because I am pretty far south in their range but we catch them in Michigan when we go).  DNR puts creel size and number limits on bass for a reason.  They know what a body of water can handle as far as catch and keep.  I just don’t really like the taste of largemouth.  
 

 

[J Francho]

1 hour ago, TnRiver46 said:

Those two species taste the same, something was awry 

I'd say that where the came from made a difference.  The smallmouth are from Lake Ontario, which is much cooler and has far less dissolved nutrients than where most LMB come from.  You don't find LMB out in the main lake too often.  Other than that, there's was no difference in prep.  LMB always taste like garbage when I've had it.  We have plenty of panfish, perch, walleye, pike, salmon, and trout to keep our bellies full, and they taste much better than the best bass I've eaten.  I'd lump LMB with carp and suckers as far as edibility.  I'm sure there plenty of recipes people love, just not me.