Do you toss them back or eat them ?

This might give you a start one what YOU should do:

https://dchpexternalapps.doh.state.fl.us/fishadvisory/

Geno

Eat them, just not every day. Even canned tuna I only eat ever so often.

I catch and fillet a lot of walleye from lake Erie, I eat them but as has been said not every day. My buddy also catches a lot but won't touch the ones we get in Erie, he gives them all away.

Your net intake of lead over say the last 10 years is what matters, lead being held in fat and slow to be eliminated. I'm not a kid, pregnant woman, and I don't eat paint chips or drink bad water. Plus I don't eat fish that often. So I eat it if it's just the typical warning.

Don't know how they determine a safe level now but used to be with what amount to trace elements you test until you first see a reaction. Then divide that dose by at least 10, or maybe 100 if keeping your grant demands a little hysteria.

It all depends on who is doing the testing.....If it's the government, it's BS!

We've paid for independent test and proved the government test are misleading, but the government refuses to change their testing methods and here in north La., the mercury warnings remain in place.

Geno , thanks .
Wonder why there's no mention of other fish ?
Saw a warning to not eat Bluecat catfish especially big ones - seems odd it and many others aren't mentioned on the state website .

Old timers locally say it's propaganda - trying to scare people so they don't keep any [or very few] fish they catch . They've been catching and eating fish for many years and all have perfectly healthy grown children and grandchildren ...?..

Oldman3 ,
What were the findings of the independent testing ?

Eat enough, you will glow in the dark!

I eat fish from waters with advisories on occasion. Logistics prevents me from overdoing it even if I wanted to.

I know people down here who have been eating fish out of local rivers their entire lives that are pushing 90 years of age. IIRC , most if not all of these freshwater rivers now have advisories that warn not to eat bass or catfish at all and only eat panfish once a week.

Personally, I have had a hard time believing anything the govt says about the environment for quite a while. One thing you probably could do if concerned is to be sure to fillet the skin off which is supposed to eliminate a lot of contaminants. Filleting itself also eliminates the bones which could store toxins as well.

I think in most cases, no more than people get to go fishing, no more fish than they get to catch because of over fishing, and no more than they get to keep because of size and creel limits, it would be pretty hard to poison yourself with mercury from fish.....but its a personal judgement call.

Give them to my in-laws.

We give a lot of the fish to the porch monkeys swimming at the boat ramp.

we can be heroes...for just one day.

Well, boys, my health crashed and burned 25 years ago, I went to all the great and good doctors in the State of Georgia and spent many thousands, and the docs were clueless.
It turned out, I was sick from lead poisoning.
Also had just a touch of mercury poisoning.

It took me years, spending many more thousands, to get over it. I tell you guys, lead and mercury poisoning will destroy your life.

What was the cause of your problems? Ed k

I think it’s been in fish forever. If anything it’s probably less now. Companies and people are dumping less contaminated water in our waters now. We just did not check it 50 years ago. Hasbeen

Well, I asked the doctor, "How in hell did I get lead poisoning?" He said, hard to tell there are a lot of toxins out there.
I have cast a lot of lead balls for muzzleloaders so I got some lead there. But the main culprit, I went to Mexico in 1975 and brought back some black and red glazed pottery. And I used it to eat from, and to drink margueritas from, for several years.
And I bought a test kit, and tested that Mexican drinking cup, and it was loaded up with lead.

On the mercury I just don't know, but my mom used to spray my bedroom at night with Raid, just before I went to bed, and back in the fifties there was mercury in Raid.

There are a lot of toxins out there and it is a crap shoot as to whether they make you sick or not.

I remember reading one time that you should put the whole fish in the freezer, standing on its head. As the temperature drops, the fish will respond just like a thermometer, with the mercury plummeting to the head. After it has frozen solid, you remove the head and the remainder of the fish will be lead-free.

As to my previous post, I purposely left out the :D, just to see if there would be anyone who actually believed that I was serious.

I wont go into the why all this happened, just about the testing.

Back in the late 70's, the gov. tested fish in the Ouachita River, up around the state line and said the fish had high concentrations of mercury and issued warnings about eating the fish. They claimed the old oil field meters that were broken leaked mercury onto the ground and that was the cause. To this day, the commercial fishermen are restricted to fishing within the river bank. When the river floods some of the very best fishing is in the woods, but the gov. claims the fish in the woods are not safe to eat because of mercury. When I ask where the fish go when the water goes down or what happens to the mercury when the fish swim back into the river channel, they will walk off. I do this everytime I see one of the gamewardens at the river. It's gotten to the point they will leave if they even see me. I love to do it when there is a crowd of people, like at the public landing.

Now for the testing.... the gov. takes a fish out of the water and puts it on ice. They take the whole fish, put it in a grinder and grind it up, then put it in a blender and make a liquid out of it. Then they test this liquid for chemicals, such as mercury. How many people eat the head, guts, scales, skin, etc of a fish? What is the function of the liver? See what I mean? We offered to pay the gov. to test fish that we took from the woods and river and they agreed, for $1000 per fish tested. SOB's.

We found a university that could and would test the fish for $100. The university told us up front that their equipment could not register as small of trace amounts, as the governments, but it would go way below what the government has stated is safe levels to eat. They tested the fish and barely got any traces of mercury at all. When we asked why there was so much difference in their findings and the govs, they told us about how each of them tested. The university only tested the part of the fish you eat. They filleted the fish and then tested it. Kinda makes sense, doesn't it.

We even tried to get the Army Corp of Engineers to test fish for us and all hell broke loose when we showed up with the fish. When asked, they said they would do it and not charge us, but when we showed up with the fish, they refused. Then when we pushed for an answer, they threatened to call the law and have us removed from the property. When the push the issue, they claimed we might have taken the fish from other waters, that they didn't know for sure where the fish came from, so they wouldn't test them. We offered to let them come with us and get the fish, but they refused. SOB's.

Just as a footnote to all of this.... back in the 60's, Alabama or Georgia, might have been both, had a gov. ban/warning on eating quail..... mercury or something. A study was done to find out just how much you had to eat to reach the warning threshold. Using gov. figures on how much mercury? was in each bird and the gov. figure on what was the threshold, it figured out that a person had to eat 3 railroad boxcars of quail a day for a year to get enough mercury? to reach the unsafe level.

That's our gov. at work for us.

You are so full of s c hitt!





Everyone knows they dont swim.....

What size Mercury did the fish swallow? One big enough to eat a Marauder or something similar would probably need a power winch on a wrecker boom just to land it!
Jerry

There are bodies of water here in Connecticut that have high amounts of lead, mercury, pcb with restrictions based on risk group.

I have read reports of canned fish found in sunken ships from the 1700's and early 1800's were loaded with mercury. Its always been there. Just one of those things. I have eaten fish all my life and I don't glow. I am a feisty 73 and still going strong.

I remember reading about some expedition to the frozen north that failed to make it. Graves were discovered with the bodies having expressions of agony. It was determined that the lids of the canned food had been sealed with lead, which poisoned the crew.

My cousin was a hospital admin - and once sent me a study on metals and the body.

At the end of the day it says that once a metal reaches a level in the body it triggers an illness.... so all those recommendations on how many fish you can eat are based at not hitting that line.

I think Oldman3 makes a good point on testing the whole fish. I had 2 generations of family literally living lakefront on Clearlake Calif. Avid fishermen and fish eaters. Particularly crappie. Clearlake is one of the highest mercury hotspots in the west. Mercury mines and dormant volcano on the eastern shore. Anyway, I attended many of their funerals, most of them lived into their 80's and I think almost without exception, breading, shortening, and tobacco killed them. Yeah, I know, anecdotal evidence is no evidence.

If they're still testing fish (or whatever edible stuff) that way it would actually be a worthwhile doctoral dissertation for some student to validate the differences and come up with a more accurate way to measure it.

Certainly a lot better dissertation than one about my farts suppression females.

I don't catch and eat enough fish to worry about mercury.

What bothers me is the elevated e coli levels in the local waterways. Caused by homeless encampments s hitting in the water.

Saw an interview of some government official being asked why they don't install portable bathrooms for the homeless. The guy said, "they just tear them up." Great. So you're just gonna let them ruin the waterways?

5sDad—your talking about the Franklin Expedition-it has since been found those guys didn’t die of lead poisoning.
Those expressions on their faces were pretty normal for a face that had been freeze-dried for 140 years

I think Mercury infish is a contributing factor for Stick

My Dad is a commercial fisherman, fishing the waters I was talking about on the upper Ouachita River. He's been eating those fish all his life and lots of them..... he's still fishing and if the Good Lord is willing, he'll be 93 next month.

Yeah, those fish are bad for you! (Where's the sarcasm thingy?)

Oh, another tidbit..... The gov. cried and wailed about the fish being bad from the mercury that leaked from the old oilfield meters.... Then they found some ponds that had never been flooded by high water and the mercury levels were above normal in them. That stumped them...... they finally admitted that mercury is naturally occurring on our part of the country, but wont lift the fish warning or let the commercial fishermen fish in the woods.

Thanks for the information.

Did she have a big life policy on you?

What did you take to get rid of the lead and Hg?

Chelation with leeches

He meant splash. Splash and piss, even in swimming pools.

It's not mainly in blood iirc.

I think it binds with brain tissue, especially in folks from Tennessee.

It would be interesting to know the Hg concentrations in the fat and bloodline of big blue cats vs the meat.

Could be, I have a explosive personality disorder.

But a good one, Slum, and prolly due to too much catfish.

I had one of them mercury/amalgam fillings come out of my tooth last week & had it replaced with a composite filling.

Don't feel any damn different.


Mike

Hell everyone around here knows damn good n well you don't eat any catfish over 4-5 lbs.

All that gray and dark down in the deep meat.

Tn regs only allow one daily catfish =/> than 34" limit.