Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation cooking fresh catfish nuggets.

Farm raised will taste different depending on the ponds/tanks they are raised in, and how they are handled after. Put them in vats for a few days before shipping, with running water and let them clean out, will taste better that directly on the truck to the processing plant. The plant should test a few for off flavors, but who knows. They take a tail section and microwave it, so nothing but the fish taste is there. Any off flavors should show and the batch rejected, but not near as many raised as in the past and not as many processing plants, so they might think they can skip a step to two. miles

yes, i understand it can be related to the soil in the pond where the fish are raised.

it's a peculiar subject. some ponds always produce "sweet" fish, others, not as often if ever. i do not know how their food source interacts w/the water to affect flavor. most of our fish is imported from arkansas & mississippi. we have struggled mightily to bring the catfish processing industry to georgia. right now, growing poultry remains one of our strong points. those cubans love good, low-cost chicken.

It should not. They should be fed floating feed, to keep them off the bottom mud when feeding. Arkansas catfish farms took a hit a few years ago when feed got high, and many farms were abandoned due to bankruptcy. For years your saw fish farms just growing up into weeds and brush. some have since been converted to farm land, but the money borrowed on the fish farm made the price prohibitive. Lots of money spent building levees that would have to be pushed down and leveled for other farming. miles

the idea that we Americans can grow our own food is a good subject. we import a lot of food, while still growing a lot of protein and carbos here...beef, pork, poultry, corn, wheat, rice, fish, etc. etc.

grain prices and the demand for protein vary day by day. milk production is a good example, and just add in gov't subsidies, regs, and rules and one wonders how the dairy farmers make it?

but, in terms of fish, stream caught natural fish is about as good as it gets. i just wish there were more opportunities to do so.

if push comes to shove, stream caught fish is more flavorful than pond/reservoir raised fish. imho.