Fishing for food

[jwo1124]

I fish a local pond which inhabits largemouth bass, pikerel, sunfish, perch, crappie, stocked rainbow trout, stocked brown trout, and stocked salmon. I don;t think I would eat largemouth since they are a prized sportfish, and I never heard of people eating pikerel, though I would expect them to taste like pike which I have heard of people eating. And I'm sure the rest of the fish are edible.

Has anyone here eaten bluegill? I am looking at a recipe online for them but it calls for "panfish fillets" not specifically bluegill. Are they a good fish to eat? There must be thousands in this local pond, so they could be a convienent snack if I aquire a taste. Plus I could save money on buying cold cuts and other live stock products from the stop and shop if I learned how to fllet and cook some fishies.

[jwo1124]

when a recipes calls for you to "clean a fish" what does this mean. I know you can just cut fillets from fish by slicing down the sides without having to clean/scale it.

[Catt]

Blue gill are outstanding fried, scale them, cut the head off, & remove the guts  

[jwo1124]

Thanks Catt.

By the way, are there any places where I shouldn't keep fish from. How do I know the fish are safe to eat? One pond I fish at has signs posted that the fish may be contaminated with a chemical they use to spray the surrounding trees for bugs. So I obviously woulodn;t eat fish from there.  But other than that, when signs aren't posted by local Government, should I assume that all other ponds/lakes are safe to keep fish from? I also fish a real small swamp type pond which has losts of dink bass and sunfish. This would be a good place to get some fish from, but is there a chance I could get parasites or something from these fish or the water? I would hate to get sick and miss work and school. Any help with this subject would be great.

[frogtog]

Thanks Catt.

By the way, are there any places where I shouldn't keep fish from. How do I know the fish are safe to eat? One pond I fish at has signs posted that the fish may be contaminated with a chemical they use to spray the surrounding trees for bugs. So I obviously woulodn;t eat fish from there. But other than that, when signs aren't posted by local Government, should I assume that all other ponds/lakes are safe to keep fish from? I also fish a real small swamp type pond which has losts of dink bass and sunfish. This would be a good place to get some fish from, but is there a chance I could get parasites or something from these fish or the water? I would hate to get sick and miss work and school. Any help with this subject would be great.

As long as there is no row crops growing around the pond and the fish don't glow in the dark you should be OK. What I mean by this is farmers use a lot of chemicals on crops and they tend to run off in ponds.

[justfishin]

I am not a big fish eater but, in the summer when we would visit my grandmother in Colonial Heights Va outside of Richmond they used to take me fishing for " Flyers " as they called them. We would bring them home and fry them in corn meal and they were excellent. I think a flyer is in the sunfish family. Oh, also, eat all those nasty old green bass you want, just leave the brown ones alone. ;D