Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Are Bluegill worth messing with to eat?

I catch drums pretty regular while catfishing, usually scale them and cut for bait. After reading on here that some folks down TX/LA way eat them I filleted a couple and cut the red out of them. Who would have thought, when fried they taste exactly like fish. My wife likes the stones out of their heads too for whatever reason.

Good gosh, sorry, but have not read all 6 pages.



But it taste fishy??????? WTF is it supposed to tasts like??????????????

I grew up eating wild caught catfish & about all the pan fish. Scaled, gutted, SKIN ON & BONE IN. It established to me what fish taste like at an early age, late 1950's-early 1960's. Times passed & farm raised fish became popular, the flavor faded. Folks de-boned, filleted, skinned & washed the flavor away.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a good meal. But fishy tasting gets my attention, not swampy, but flavor, flavor that so many are missing. I rest.

Catfish in running water taste 100x better than farm raised. Give me a tabby any day.

I caught a monster, like 20lbs, on an ultralight with a roadrunner when I was in college. I was fishing a little creek that runs into Texoma and hammering the sandbass. All the sudden my reel is about to catch fire drag a screaming. I just knew I had a big striper that had run up out of the lake and then after 20 minutes I land this huge drum. Didn’t take a picture or anything, just conked him and pitched him off in the weeds.

I dont like fishey schiett taste from fat. My fish taste like clean fish, not fishy like fish slime. There is good fish and bad fish and most bad fish is yuk, fishy.

I need to find a place to catfish around here.

GW,

If you got a fly rod it will make your bluegill catching a thousand times more enjoyable.

You guys that head and gut these little guys. Do you eat the skin or does it peel off after you fry them? Only times I’ve ever eaten any fish skin it was really fishy and not something I wanted to try again.

+10 on this especially on top water flies or poppers, but have caught many more on soft hackles, very small leech patterns and small (sz 12) Pistol Pete's.

Yes, i can taste the alfalfa in farmed fish, esp catfish.

I like to leave the skin on mine. Salt the skin before frying. Fry up crispy. mmmmm good!

He might be speaking of pickerel. He mentioned they were like northern pike but smaller, sounds like a pickerel. I've heard bowfin called dogfish. In the old Ozark's walleye were often called jack pike.

Yea, that's the one, Chain Pickerel. Biggest one I ever caught was about 16" long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Hell of a fighter. Voracious appetite. Sharp teeth. Dad told me to kill every one I caught. Locally thought of as a trash fish.

Yea, that's the one, Chain Pickerel. Biggest one I ever caught was about 16" long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Hell of a fighter. Voracious appetite. Sharp teeth. Dad told me to kill every one I caught. Locally thought of as a trash fish.