Cat Fish Question

Strizzo wrote: In reply to Brett_Murphy: That's what I'm thinking of, horrible little bait thieves that taste like crap. I guess if you can stand the taste it probably won't kill you. We had heard the same about barracuda until our guide in the Bahamas kept and cleaned the one that tried to snatch our snapper and got caught when he came back for the head. Supposedly the meat can be poisonous, buy he said as long as the flies land on it, it's ok to eat. He also retreived the snapper from said cuda's belly, filleted it and took it home with him too, so I guess it takes all kinds.

Uhhh...not sure I like that particular test...

I have always heard that small barracuda are fine to eat. The large ones are more apt to have ciguatera. Actually many large fish(grouper) living near reefs can have ciguatera. I just read this test and I think that it is more accurate than the fly test.

While bonefishing in Sandy Point, Abaco a few years back, the guides would keep a couple cudas every day. I asked how they knew whether the fish had ciguatera or not and they told me their secret for testing it.

First, you fillet the fish quickly and get it on ice immediately. At the end of the day you deliver a nice fresh piece to your neighbor and put the rest in your icebox overnight.

The next morning you knock on your neighbor's door and if he opens it, the fish is OK to eat.

pilotbraden wrote: I have always heard that small barracuda are fine to eat. The large ones are more apt to have ciguatera. Actually many large fish(grouper) living near reefs can have ciguatera. I just read this test and I think that it is more accurate than the fly test. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Damn. Grouper is my favorite fish.

I have been holding off responding until I had the chance to read the responses here, and to do a bit of further research. According to the well respected Florida Sportsman magazine, the salt water catfish tastes just like the fresh water kind. No special prep needed. First hand experiences say the same thing. So, we have all been listening to an urban myth, apparently. Re: Carp as mentioned above. When living in Ohio many years ago, I took a neighbor fishing. All he caught was a 18" carp. He would not let me throw it back. When we got back home, I was told that nobody had any idea how to cook fresh caught fish. So.... I cleaned it, fileted it, put the nice big filets on foil, added butter, salt and pepper, and lemon slices, and cooked it on the charcoal grill. It was delicious. Another urban myth destroyed.

I have eaten a lot of fish, catfish and monkfish are the only ones that I wished I didn't. monkfish bleh!

Carp is a delicacy in Germany. They have cisterns beneath the restaurants and keep the carp in them alive with fresh water. After a while of not being able to eat bottom scum, they clean themselves out. Carp are not typically filleted because of their spines.

I would have top be real hungry to eat a carp. We used to catch them in gill nets when I worked for the Fish and Wildlife Service in the early 70s. I hated those bastards.

While monkfish is uglier than anyone on this list, they taste a lot like lobster. It was called the poor man's lobster and it was cheap till it got trendy and the prices went through the rough.

I have yet to find a fresh water fish that I like. I grew up thinking I hated fish until I tried sword fish and had an orgasm at the table right there in public.

I got to trying other fish and found out that not only do I not like the cottony texture and lack of flavor of freshwater fish, but I don't like oily fish like mackeral, tuna or salmon, but give me a fresh caught grouper and I'm in heaven.

The take away is to try a few different types of fish, you may find one that you like - a lot!

My neighbor was Italian. Not of Italian heritage, but from Italy. Same as Germany apparently, as far as delicacy goes. He and his wife (from Naples) were not cooks at all, so I was a hero.

pilotbraden wrote: I have always heard that small barracuda are fine to eat. The large ones are more apt to have ciguatera. Actually many large fish(grouper) living near reefs can have ciguatera. I just read this test and I think that it is more accurate than the fly test. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While bonefishing in Sandy Point, Abaco a few years back, the guides would keep a couple cudas every day. I asked how they knew whether the fish had ciguatera or not and they told me their secret for testing it. First, you fillet the fish quickly and get it on ice immediately. At the end of the day you deliver a nice fresh piece to your neighbor and put the rest in your icebox overnight. The next morning you knock on your neighbor's door and if he opens it, the fish is OK to eat.

well, he did also say that after the fly test he gives some to the lady next door, then if she isn't sick a couple days later, he'll eat it then.

i can see why they would eat cuda, nearly the whole thing was meat, this guy was about 30 pounds and probably 15-20 of it was meat. he said it tastes like conch.

carguy123 wrote: I have yet to find a fresh water fish that I like. I grew up thinking I hated fish until I tried sword fish and had an orgasm at the table right there in public.

Try walleye or Northern Pike.

Pretty sure there are walleye in Texas, not so sure about pike.

Brett_Murphy wrote:

carguy123 wrote: I have yet to find a fresh water fish that I like. I grew up thinking I hated fish until I tried sword fish and had an orgasm at the table right there in public.

Try walleye or Perch

FTFY. Pike are too bony, way too much of a pain to clean. Never actually ate one that wasn't pickled.

Brett_Murphy wrote:

carguy123 wrote: I have yet to find a fresh water fish that I like. I grew up thinking I hated fish until I tried sword fish and had an orgasm at the table right there in public.

Try walleye or Northern Pike. Pretty sure there are walleye in Texas, not so sure about pike.

I lived up north and tried them. As I remember then, they are way too oily, unless I have my fish mixed up.

mtn wrote: FTFY. Pike are too bony, way too much of a pain to clean. Never actually ate one that wasn't pickled.

Northern Pike is delicious. There are videos a plenty on youtube for cleaning tricks. I had some pan fried that was cleaned by an expert at cleaning pike and whitefish (same deal with the bones).

Very good. Don't ask me how to clean them though - no idea.

I grew up eating catfish, mostly battered & fried, but blackened, grilled, etc. is good too.

Catfish is delicious, caught wild and farm raised too. There's a pretty huge industry around farm raised catfish (Aquaculture) back home in AR. We stocked our ponds on our cattle farm with channel catfish, bass, crappie, bream, blue gill, etc. Channel catfish, are the most common to eat, but Flat head, and Blue are often caught too.

There's what we always called "Mud Cats," they're brown and splotchy colored, I never ate them, always threw them back, Grandpa always said that Mud Cats were no good for eating, that they taste "muddy," so we never kept them.

Fried Catfish, hushpuppies, green tomato relish, and fried biscuits are a Southern staple. The little community I grew up in hosts an annual Fish Fry, 1st Friday in May, every year, people come from all over for fried Catfish, and all the fixin's.

• Lee

carguy123 wrote: I lived up north and tried them. As I remember then, they are way too oily, unless I have my fish mixed up.

They are white flaky fish with a mild flavor. They are not oily at all unless they are cooked wrong.

For walleye, just pan fry the naked fillets in butter with a bit of lemon juice and dill. Then eat them.

Smoked carp is really good. Dunno if you can do that with catfish.

stroker wrote: Smoked carp is really good. Dunno if you can do that with catfish.

Catfish is harder to keep lit. You'll go through a book of matches trying to smoke one.

The nice thing about catfish is that you don't need to catch more than one to get a nice meal.

carguy123 wrote: I have yet to find a fresh water fish that I like. I grew up thinking I hated fish until I tried sword fish and had an orgasm at the table right there in public.

crappie filets (deep fried or pan fried).... after king mackerel steaks cooked on a grill, they're the best tasting fish I've ever had

I haven't had salt water catfish but I don't see how any one doesn't like freshwater catfish.

wbjones wrote:

carguy123 wrote: I have yet to find a fresh water fish that I like. I grew up thinking I hated fish until I tried sword fish and had an orgasm at the table right there in public.

crappie filets (deep fried or pan fried).... after king mackerel steaks cooked on a grill, they're the best tasting fish I've ever had

I grew up on crappie, catfish, perch (bream), bass, a few eel thrown in for good measure and I never acquired a taste for any of them. They simply didn't have a good texture nor much of any flavor except the occasional muddy taste. But when I hit salt water white fish I found out what had been missing in freshwater fish.

Freshwater catfish tastes like mud. I've had blue, channel, flathead and two different types of bullhead. It can be a very slight mud taste if the catfish are done right, but you can never get rid of it.

The only cure is to bread them and deep fry them in a batter that will disguise the taste.

I eat Fried Catfish, and it's the only thing that swims I eat. I've grown up in a state where eating it is pretty much mandatory.

Brett_Murphy wrote: The only cure is to bread them and deep fry them in a batter that will disguise the taste.

And salt water white fish doesn't need the disguise to make it taste good.

Wanna talk about weird bottom feeders - anyone here familiar with lawyers? Not the ones in suits. They're also known as burbot, mariah, eelpout or mud shark* and they're the only freshwater cod-like species. (Also the only member of its genus.) Think of something between a catfish and an eel.

They're a bit of a local delicacy in Wisconsin, particularly along Lake Michigan, but I believe they live in all the Great Lakes and their tributaries.

It's also referred to as "poor man's lobster" since it's meaty and a little bit sweet. Pretty delicious, really.

At my restaurant on the Island (The Washington Hotel), we managed to goad one of the fishermen (who owns the restaurant referred to below) to save us some of the nicer livers from the fish he processed. It was waste to him, but he'd humor us occasionally. So every now and then we'd get about a pint of these pristine, fresh livers to make a killer pate with. Fun stuff.

There is also a ton of whitefish up there, but since that's such a generic name, I really don't know to which species it refers. It's an extremely oily, fatty fish, which makes it a prime candidate for smoking. For that matter, if you can ever get you hands on some smoked whitefish, jump on it. It's bony as hell and quite a chore to eat, but it's generally worth it.

This is the front of one of the five or so restaurants on Washington Island, WI, where I worked for a couple summers. One of the three bars "in town" which consists primarily of...three bars along the same side of the road.

*Which bring to mind a certain Zappa tune inspired by a certain infamous incident involving Led Zeppelin, a groupie, and a hotel at which one could fish out of the windows.