When I’m doing a float on a river, even if I wanted to keep a few bass to eat, (I don’t ) it’s a pain to deal with them. Putting them on a stringer, dragging them over rocks and weeds and I’d need to keep a cooler with ice for the drive home. I’m often staying in motels when I’m on a road trip and I’d have no way to cook them. So much easier to put them back, and have a steak at a restaurant. When I’m in my boat, my usual fishing partner likes eating fish a lot more than I do, we’ll sometimes keep some of the bigger rock bass we catch. Most of my boat fishing is done on cool northern lakes. Very fresh lake fish that were caught just a few hours ago, taste so much better to me than ocean fish that were caught who knows when.

I really don't keep any fish to eat anymore, not that I"m against it in any way.

I"m just lazy, I consider it work.

I'm long time disciple of Charlie Brewer and his "do nothing" approach, it seems to have carried over to other aspects of my life

Google ain’t never been fishin 😂

4 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

With a blindfold and none of the info on where it came from, I’d venture you wouldn’t be able to pick the correct origins

How many of yall have eaten a largemouth bass from 90 degree water? Probably not many because you’ve already decided in your head that it’s icky. But it’s actually amazing . Tastes just like the ones I ate in Michigan cold clear water , maybe even better (no, the horror! Can’t be true even if it is).

The only water here that reaches 90 is in bath tubs lol

I’ve had some bad fish in my day but none of them were ever bass

If you were going to keep some fish to eat depending on where you live, bluegills, crappie, perch, walleye, taste better than bass in my opinion. If you live up in Canada, those native guides can fillet and cook a northern pike that will taste devine. I am not sure how they get all the bones out, magic or some kind of Canadian sorcery, but fantastic shore lunch.

8 minutes ago, rboat said:

If you live up in Canada, those native guides can fillet and cook a northern pike that will taste devine. I am not sure how they get all the bones out, magic or some kind of Canadian sorcery, but fantastic shore lunch.

We'd tell you all, but then we'd have to kill you, lol.

I use the five fillet method:

Absolutely eat bass, My good friend has a 23 acre lake and was told by Biologists that in order to sustain good populations of fish that he needs to take 20 lbs of bass, 30 lbs of bluegill, and every d**n crappie per acre. Evidently Crappie can screw a lake up real fast.

Northern pike is actually pretty good white tender filet, especially out of colder water. There is an art to filleting them and removing the bones. I am not very proficient at it.

Very few anglers here target or catch them with the intent to harvest even though they are very abundant and easy to catch. Everyone is after walleye, trout, or panfish.

Have eaten a lot of bass over the last 50 years, hot water , cold water, clean, muddy and brackish and they all tasted about the same when they came out of the grease, great. The area I mainly fish, a coastal marsh, has no shortage of smaller bass, any over 4 pounds is a big fish, so I've never had any problem keeping some for a meal and always from 1-2 pound size.

I also thought pike were great tasting fish, caught them mostly at the top of Minnesota on rainy lake and isle royale, MI. I also caught one in Alaska where they required any pike caught to be killed. The bones were a pain but we just ate around them with a fork , didn’t have service to look up the bone removal methods haha. Never caught a big one tho. The fish were slimy and stinky but the meat was white and flaky. I wonder if snakehead are similar? Shallow swampy type fish that somehow has good meat. I’ve never had one but reports I’ve seen say they are one of the best eating fish

Side note : how fun is a fish that destroys a spoon or fluke in shallow weeds ???!!! Amazing

One incentive I have that leads to more fish getting eaten is my wife does all the cleaning and prep work.

We do quite a bit of camping on various lakes in VA / WV and always have a pickup bed of apple wood.

Smoked on an open fire , it don't get much better.

Oh, she loves the Rapala filet board 😁

2 minutes ago, Bird said:

she loves the Rapala filet board

Theres a plastic one in the bed of my truck and three traditional and one electric fillet knives in a door.

I like knowing my son has some skills to feed himself if the going gets tough. I think my dad liked knowing that with me too. I remember the sense of pride I felt as a kid bringing home a stringer of fish and cleaning them and cooking them for my aunts and uncles and brothers and parents and grandparents.

That ritual was what fishing was all about in the beginning for me - I miss the excitement of getting enough fish for a big fish fry and the joy on my families face knowing we were having fresh caught fish instead of take out or a grocery store run.

It’s nasty and it’s a lot of work to keep fish but it’s good for the soul and I actually try to help folks fishing for food these days - a few years back they used to upset me - but they probably help out more than hurt the chances of me catching a trophy every year with the culling they do.

If you catch a bass - I recommend soaking the meat overnight in saltwater - seems to completely remove any muddy taste for any fish I catch - regardless of cooking method.

10 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

The fish were slimy and stinky

I think this is what turns most anglers off from keeping them. It’s like a smelly sinus infection.

Also, the chances of catching a big one is low, but not impossible. The last stronghold to consistently catch more sizable versions is in Canada.

I caught about 75 last season on accident and I estimate about 7-8 of them to be of the “larger variety” of 30+ inches in length. My biggest was a 34 incher.

@Pat Brown , I do like the saltwater trick as well but my midwestern wife and her family RAVE over fried catfish. We soak those in buttermilk overnight

Eating a bass from warm polluted water?

No way.

That's why I stick with beef!

Eating Bass is a sin....😇

1 hour ago, gim said:

The last stronghold to consistently catch more sizable versions is in Canada.

True. I'd catch a 40+-incher on most trips while fishing for smallmouth. I unhooked most of them in the water rather than risk netting them with a bass net and bringing them into a canoe. This one wasn't measured, but having caught several its size, I'm guessing she was 43 inches:

But these were what we wanted to catch mostly:

2 hours ago, Pat Brown said:

It’s nasty and it’s a lot of work to keep fish but it’s good for the soul and I actually try to help folks fishing for food these days

I think everyone who eats meat should clean a fish, deer, or squirrel at least once in their life. Life and death are distanced from most Americans today. We once all took part in killing chickens and bathing our deceased relatives. Now we pay butchers and morticians to hide death from us.

@Swamp Girl my biggest is a 43 incher. Caught way back in 2005 while I was muskie fishing.

A stateside 40+ incher is a very rare fish.

Here in Missouri in the fall they have spot remover fish fry’s. They bully our Smallmouth and a lot of guys don’t like em It dosent seem to hurt the population at all. So I have a few a year

I generally don't. I have before and I don't think there's anything wrong with snagging a few 2-3lbers here and there. But it's just a generic white fish, it's as tasty as the amount of butter and crackers you add to it lol.

I catch and release. I have no issues if they don’t go to waste.

Studies have shown that it is beneficial to harvest a percentage of smaller bass from a body of water in order to increase the average size of each fish. Every fish needs a specific amount of resources and the term for this is carrying capacity. Each lake or river, depending on size only has so much to offer. So the idea here is that if you thin a few of the smaller ones, that availability of resources can be filled by a single bigger version.

And when I say smaller bass, I mean 12 inches. Not 3 or 4 pounders. Up here in the north, it takes a bass 10 years to reach 20 inches/5 pounds because of colder water. Replacing just a single fish like that takes many years.