So I've never eaten one but there's a local river that has nice clean water and a pretty healthy population of 12in smallies. How are they?

@TnRiver46 I think he will probably have the best answer for you!

Taste just like any bass, delicious 

We found on a couple week-long Canadian trips that smallmouth 13 inches and smaller were as good as walleye. Over 13 inches were fleshy and many had worms. 

We kept some back in the day on the Canadian drive in trips. Battered and fried it was hard for me to tell a huge taste difference from a similar size walleye. I imagine if you baked a several species of fish from the same body of water with no seasoning/oil etc. you would find differences.

Only one way to find out.  Keep 2-3 next time out and fry them up!

Sacrilegious for me. I won’t kill one on purpose. But like others have said I have heard the small ones are good deep fried like walleye. 

You have to use a chainsaw to fillet the ones Dwight catches 

2 hours ago, Dwight Hottle said:

But like others have said I have heard the small ones are good deep fried like walleye. 

 

Let's be honest, just about any fish is gonna be decent if you lather it up in batter and then deep fry it.  Might as well head to long John silvers.

I'm with @Dwight Hottle

Simply cannot take a fillet knife to the brown ones.

However, the green ones are regular table fare when we venture south of the border.

 I've developed a bit of a liking for them too.

So I'll knock the side off a few slightly bigger than keeper-sized green bass each season.

I will admit they seem to taste better in Mexico.

Maybe it's the view. 

A-Jay

1 hour ago, gim said:

 

Let's be honest, just about any fish is gonna be decent if you lather it up in batter and then deep fry it.  Might as well head to long John silvers.

Ya, even eelpout can be made edible that way.

 

Never even caught a smallie, so no idea. I do keep a few 1.5#-2.5# largies, and they're good with a little butter, salt and pepper under the broiler.

 

Selective Harvest - that's my motto.

Almost any fish that you would deep fry is tasty cooked on the grill with olive oil & seasoning of your choice or smear it with mayo & seasoning. 

2 hours ago, gim said:

 

Let's be honest, just about any fish is gonna be decent if you lather it up in batter and then deep fry it.  Might as well head to long John silvers.

No thanks, long John’s is nasty 

I've got no problem with eating bass but, where I fish, walleyes are fairly easy to catch.  In the pan, walleyes are so much better... asmost as good as crappies.

Never ate a Smallie, But the Spots fry up really good. 

One word. BillyDeeLicious. I helped an elderly women get into some smallies and she caught a decent 3-4 lber maybe 12 years ago. 
 

The fight exhausted her but the smile on her face said it all. She’s from the catch to eat generation. So she took it home. The next time I saw her, she had all wrapped up in foil and a zip lock bag part of the bass she cooked. She was already a great cook, but man oh man, this was one of the best well seasoned fresh water fish I had ever tried. Tasty and flaky. It could not have tasted better.  
 

She is now 86 and can’t fish anymore, but if I ever gut hook an LMB, or if the hook did some permanent damage (usually 1-2 pounders) I give her a call to see if she wants it. The answer is yes 100% of the time. 
 

I think the last bass I gave her was in late spring or early summer. It is then I learned she can no longer scale them so I had my first stab at descaling an LMB …. With only a knife and a spoon. Oh boy. It took a while. I bought her a set of fish scalers for Christmas and she was very happy. We will both be ready to scale the next bass, lol. 😂 

I was raised in the catch-em, scale-em, fry-em era;  today I'm 100% catch and release, regardless of species.  It takes a long time to grow a big one, especially smallmouth, my most adored fish.  Sometimes I may catch a Walleye and think about dinner, but back in the water it will go.  When I come in for the day I'm usually pretty beat-up anyway, and the thought of carving fillets does not appeal to me.

Smallmouth bass are delicious and nutritious.  They taste better than a largemouth bass , but not as good as a bluegill. I’m sure everyone is in agreement about that. 

I prefer my fish fully filleted and grilled. I can tell the taste between gills, crappie, ring perch, white perch, catfish, smallmouth, largemouth, walleye, carp, pike, spoonbill and snakehead.  I’ve had them all.  My favorite are walleye.  They have a very distinctive flavor that I personally like.  Not a fish on that list I wouldn’t eat again though. 

I’ve eaten some and they are good.  However the lake I fish the most has gizzard shad and no threadfin.  So it takes 10 years for a smallmouth to reach legal size.  When I found that out I quit eating them.

I don't think I've eaten one in 50 years.

Not to many freshwater fish I've eaten besides Yellow Perch and Channel Cats from clear cold water.

Saltwater fish is a different game, stripers, fluke, tog, spanish mackerel and even bluefish were always harvested.

Now a days it's very rare for me to harvest anything to the disdain of my wife.

I look at cleaning fish as work, being retired I avoid work at any cost.

I've become Maynard G Krebs !!