Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Anyone eat white bass/sand bass?

Title says it all. Are they any good?

Yes. I like them best out of cold water in the spring.

They're low on my list of fish to eat. Mostly I throw them back.

When I was a kid we ate hell out of em. Bet I haven’t caught one in over 40 years now.

Yep, we filet them and fry them. They aren't as good as catfish of course.

I don't know why they would not be fine.

Like a lot of less desirable fish in an area populated with the snooty species,
it's common to look down the nose at them.

Fishing Lake Erie, the captain had no interest.
We brought a few home anyway, delicious.
Not the walleye we had, but darn good.

Ticked me off how much good fish we threw back.

Just as soon as I can get the hide off of them and heat the grease. powdr

Watched a guy filet white bass and he kept his filet knife at an angle when removing the meat from the skin. It kept the majority of the dark meat on the skin. Those filets actually have been quite good fried up. Not crappie good, but I'd eat them again for sure.

I don't know from less desirable or snooty species. I do know that out of cold water in the spring they are fully equal to walleye. perch, sauger, catfish northerns, crappies or sunfish. Much better than stream trout, siskowets, LM/SM bass and a lot of others.

Well, striped bass are good, and striper/white bass hybrids (wipers) are good, so white bass surely are good, too. Stripers and wipers have a layer of red meat right down the lateral line that should be removed when you filet them, and that much improves the flavor. Do it immediately. I froze a bunch of striper filets once, thinking I could trim the red stripe just before cooking. Ended up tossing the whole batch because the meat got strong.

Thanks, I'll have to give them a try next time I catch a few.

I like them blackened. They're just another somewhat tasteless white flesh freshwater fish.

I live 25 miles from Lake Winnebago in southern Wis . The lake has a lot of them. I find them a lot more fun to catch. They eat just fine. The wife used to bring home Tilapia form the store for 8 bucks a pound. She told me to bring home some whitebass to fry , so I did. I have always kept whitebass. Three or four make a pound and are far superior to frozen Talapia in the store. They fry up just as good tasting as walleye and sometimes people will comment they like them better than walleye. have no preference cause I love fish. I used to smoke the whitebass cause they had a lot of oil. They are good that way too but not as good as channel cats.

30338...Spot on w the skinning. Without skinning out that redline/red meat they taste fishy and muddy. Current temps here on Cedar Creek Lake in Texas, water temp is falling fast. Whites/Sandies and Crappie are fired up. Sandies are daily under the water turkeys most often or on the back side of the many large humps in our lake. Crappie are real strong at bridge pilings and dock structure. I’ll add some salt to each bag of fillets as I freeze them to also cut the “whang” fro them. YMMV.

They are best caught early in spring when the water hasn't warmed . Just happens to coincide with their spawning run.

Among my other faults, I am not a fan of any panfish.

blackened or made into a fish patty 9the way you do salmon) they are great.

1) Walleye
2) Smallmouth / Largemouth bass
3) Bluegill / Redear
4) Striper
5) Catfish
6) Salmon
7) 3rd day reheated Long John Silver's
8) White bass

That bad...

No.

Same here...

Never had any problem choking them down.

As a kid we went just about every Sunday afternoon when they were running up in the river. Done right and depending on who's doing the cleaning / cooking they're not that bad. But I do like me some Long John Silver's!!

I remember when Long John Silver’s sold beer!!! It was great then. The Kids didn’t bother me as bad there then ( I mean my own kids! 🤣).

LMB that high up is qusitonable IME

I like them better than most catfish, to be honest. Not as good as Crappie or Perch, better than largemouth. To me, they taste just like Striper, just smaller.

A couple friends look down their noses at white bass but I have never thrown one back. Been eating them for over 60 years. Usually mixed with a few walleye and catfish filets.

If they come out of cold clear water they are fine.

The fillets aren't very big, so we cut them into "nugget" size piece, bread them, and then deep fry them. White bass, rock bass, and pumpkinseed sunfish are usually small, but tasty if you're willing to do the work involved in processing them.

I really like large mouth bass. I like it even better cold out of the fridge leftovers the next day.

Eaten fresh (never frozen) and hot out of the grease they are ok in NE TX. #4 on the eating fish here.

Cut the lateral red streek out of it and when you fillet them leave some meat on the skin. Red meat timmed off and they are as good as about anything.

We have some big white bass out here, up to 3 lbs. I do prefer the 1 to 1-1/4 lb size for eating. I have pickled the smaller filets a few times, mighty fine.

This!!!

I trim anything red off after skinning filets . Good stuff.
Any that don't think so, cut such off half the fish and don't on the other half, and fix separately. In the spring I catch 14-15 inchers in the river walleye fishing with jigs.

God Bless

White bass are good eating, some folks are like wine tasters, kinda snooty.

Thats one lucky fish that gets to live to fight another day i cleaned a few here a few years back and there was an awful lot of red traces in the meat and i fried em up to a big disappointment and never cleaned one since i was raised that anytime you find red in the meat of your fish get it out for good tasting results.

That red is simply slow-twitch muscle and since it does virtually all of the work in moving the fish around every day it gets a lot of by-products of metabolism added to it...

Yup!

I've never caught a white bass. They aren't around here. But striper is, and I target them on the Sacramento River when they migrate from the ocean to spawn. Stripers are delicious. One of my favorites right up there with halibut, ling cod, and rock cod.

[quote=K1500]Title says it all. Are they any good? [/quote

I have eaten a truck load of them. I have challenged a lot of people to tell the difference in them and their favorite species. A few restrictions, 1. must be cooked at the same time and in the same manner. 2. The taster tested CANNOT see or feel the pieces of fish, in other words he/she must be blindfolded and some one must feed him/her. 3. Taster gets choice of 3 out of 5 tries or 2 out of 3 tries and doesn't know results till chosen number tries are completed. BTW I have given this test to several people, ALL HAVE FAILED. Much of our taste comes from what we see & feel. Maybe you will have better luck or taste buds. I doubt it!

When I was a kid it was a huge deal to go to Fremont WI and fish the Wolf river for the white bass run we would bring back tons. We ate them all

When I moved here to the Saginaw Bay area of MI we have a ton in the Saginaw Bay and maybe because we are spoiled they are considered junk fish here

I keep some and cook them no they are not perch or walleye but they are good
Go to a fish market and there they are somebody's eating them and paying to eat them
Hank

That's funny right there, but Crappie belongs in #2