I have heard of some people that absolutely wont eat anything from there, and i've heard of people that keep everything they catch. I myself have been a little hesitant, and have seen reports that you shouldnt consume more than 6 ounces of fish meat from utah lake per month. Just wondering what the general consensus was from you guys?
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TubeDude eats the fish out of there by the pound...and other than that extra appendage, and the little nervous twitch, I don't think he has had any bad side effects[:p]
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He had that appendage before he started eating the fish from UL. That twitch is new however. But it just made him a better jigger is all.
I also eat a fair amout of UL fish. Aside from the eye I grew in the back of my head no ill effects. As for the extra eye. I think its the lakes way of keeping me safe from the reckless boaters. And fishing at UL was GREAT this year.[fishin]
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[cool][#0000ff]There have been several recent studies of the contaminants present in Utah Lake fish. About the only "red flags" have been the elevated amounts of PCBs in carp and in large channel cats. All other fish have been given a clean bill of health...so to speak. No mercury or many of the other nasty stuff present in some of the more pristine Utah waters.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Utah Lake has always gotten a bad rap because it is a shallow lake that muddies up quickly when the wind blows. It looks bad. But, it is far cleaner than many other lakes around the country from which we eat numerous commercial fish products.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]In years past, Geneva Steel and other industrial and agricultural polluters contributed a lot of harmful stuff to the lake. However, there are currently no alarms being sounded by the environmental agencies who test the water and the fish. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]The fish from Utah Lake also taste as good as any fish from any lake. No bad aftertaste...depending upon how good of a cook you are and how you prepare it.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Now...about the appendages, extra organs and the glow in the dark stuff...[/#0000ff]
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Carp no - most other things yes...
Especially those suckers in june... those and lil smokies with some Q.... mmmmm now thats good eats
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In TD's defense, I have known him for 30 plus years and he looks the same today as he did when I first met him. All those extras have been there for ever !! Ditto to what he said about the bad rap that Ut. Lake gets. If you want to get down and dirty, I would bet that Bear Lake and Fish Lake are more polluted that Utah Lake !! Reason being is that they are clear, cold bodies of water, and as a result, the biological activity is very slow. Ut. Lake on the other hand is a very warm lake and that speeds up the biological activity of the system. Any thing that goes in, gets utilized very quickly, with most of it getting tied up in the Diatoms that make up the majority of the bottom muck. Even with the advisory, the PCB level of Ut. Lake fish is below the allowable EPA levels. Eat all you want.
good info guys! I guess maybe i'll have to keep a few next time we go out.
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Just make sure that you cook it well enough to kill the parasites.
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I'm all about eating fish, as much money and time as I spend fishing I might as well get some dinner out of it, right?
Utah lake is out of the question. I have eaten fish out of there before to prove my "manhood" [laugh] but any warning is still a warning, I don't need to prove anything to anyone. I won't eat anything out of Utah Lake anymore, I don't care who has or for how long they have been eating them, I won't. Feel free to eat as much as you want, gotta' save those june suckers [:/]. If our own government says to hold back on intake their must be something wrong...
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[cool][quote Fishrmn]Just make sure that you cook it well enough to kill the parasites.
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[cool][#0000ff]What parasites?[/#0000ff]
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The worms that infest the flesh of the channel catfish swimming in Utah Lake.
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I also have to jump on board with me ol' buddy TD and attest to no harm done when eating fishies form UL where TD is concerned. I will admit however that I have wondered if maybe he eats to much fish at times when he starts to glow around his eyes and gills.
Truth known, I too have eaten a ton of fish from that pond over the past 40+ years but to this point I havent been lucky enough to develope glowing eye and gills. I do have a stub of a tail and one fin.
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[quote Fishrmn]The worms that infest the flesh of the channel catfish swimming in Utah Lake.[/quote]
[cool][#0000ff]Do you have scientific evidence of those? I have filleted a bajillion cats from Utah Lake and have never seen even one flesh parasite. Nor have I ever heard of any from the biologists who have examined plenty of fish from the lake.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Not a problem.[/#0000ff]
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Don't need scientific proof. I saw them with my own eyes. I've filleted two cats from Utah Lake in about June of 1993. The first one got barbequed almost as soon as the skin came off. Mighty tasty. About 4 days later, the second one was gonna get the same treatment. Except the fillets were kept in the refrigerator over night. When I lifted up the cello wrap there were hundreds of white worms, about 1/8 of an inch long, squirming in the flesh. I can't tell you how hard it was to keep from throwing up. I kept telling myself that no matter how hard I puked, there was no way that I was going to get rid of the fish that I had eaten 4 days earlier.
My father in law laughed when I told him the story. He and his neighbor had caught a mess of cats one night, and had brought them home and filleted them. The next day they saw the worms in their fillets. The guys at Geneva, where they worked, laughed and told them to soak the fillets in a mild brine to kill the worms. They had done the same thing that I did. They allowed the sanitation workers to take the fillets to the landfill and swore off eating fish from Utah Lake.
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[cool][#0000ff]Thanks for the backup ol' buddy.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]We are both living testament to the healthy benefits of eating fish from Utah Lake. We are both look younger, thinner and more handsome after years of ingesting those fishies. It might have affected our vision a bit though.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Kinda like the old joke about the guy who wanted to go on a diet but decided not to eat any cottage cheese...cause only fat folks eat cottage cheese. That stuff must make ya fat.[/#0000ff]
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Well your quite welcome my friend.
BTW,, Worms? Are you telling me some folks are in fear of eating worms? Are these the same folk that buy the carrots and maters down town? Oh baby! Oh baby!!
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I've also fished U,L, for over 45 years, and I've eaten a lot of kittys out of there and I am still alive,
But I never eat the big kittys, five plus pounder and up I always put them back,
They are not that good to eat anyway and I like to think I'm helping the fishery buy letting them get even bigger,
Eat the smaller ones, two to three pounders are great eaters.
as far as worms ? I've had duck breast do that same thing, just make shore you let them brine over night, use plenty of salt it kills anything [
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"Except the fillets were kept in the refrigerator over night. When I lifted up the cello wrap there were hundreds of white worms, about 1/8 of an inch long, squirming in the flesh."
[cool][#0000ff]Man, you need to clean out your refrigerator more often. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Seriously, I do not dispute what you saw. However, I DO know something about basic biology and I know that any fish from any waters can become infested with any of a variety of parasites. Often it is only a temporary infestation, lasting one generation, since the worms are not passed along to the offspring. Many parasites are brought into waters by a "host"...like birds or snails...and need that same host to keep reproducing. The parasites are seldom passed from fish to fish. They are also usually not harmful to humans. Just unappetizing.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]You saw your fish worms back in 1993. My question is whether you or anybody else has seen any in fish from the last five years. Nobody I have talked to (including DWR biologists) has observed ANY infestations in any species currently listed in Utah Lake.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Again, I do not dispute what you saw. But, I tend to trust "scientific evidence" more than what somebody saw...or thought they saw...or heard what somebody else thought they saw...many years ago. There are also plenty of Utards who still claim their are flatheads and blue cats in Utah Lake. They also claim to have caught them or seen them...or "heard tell". I have been trained to adhere to the scientific method of evaluation and diagnosis.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Don't need scientic proof? I rest my case.[/#0000ff]
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[quote TubeDude] The parasites are seldom passed from fish to fish. They are also usually not harmful to humans. Just unappetizing.[/quote]
You said it. I've lost my appetite for Utah Lake kitties. Can't say that I've had much of a hankerin' for walleyes caught from there either.
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I also am not really argueing what you saw, but did you leave the fillets in the fridge with the skin on? I along with tubedude have never seen flesh parasites in any fish I have taken from utah lake. I have however seen the small variety of leaches that are generally failrly abundant on the exterior skin of many catfhish I have caught from.there. Being a biology major I do generally pay quite a bit of attention to that type of thing, if for no other reason because I am interested in freshwater ecology. I have however seen many flesh parasites in pelican and am quite fiamiliar with what they look like, but Like I said i have never seen them in utah lake.
As to the polutants in utah lake for those who are worried also as tubedude has said you are in a lot more danger in what most people would consider pristine lakes than you are with utah lake. As others have said it just mainly gets a bad rap. actually the fact that the botom is composed of a lot of silt is another reason why it is fairly low in polutants due to the fact that silt acts as its on chemical filter. I wouldn't go eating every fish I caught out of there every day, but then again due to our higher methyl murcury levels in utah I wouldn't do that in any lake. I think the rule really would be just eat in moderation.
Every few years we go through a cycle of the media suddenly "disovering" agian that we have higher levels of methyl mucury or some other contaminant and if you eat high quantities of fish you can have health problems and then they turn it into "don't eat any fish out of lake whatever and everyone gets scared when in reality the levels have always been there for the most part and the EPA levels are very and I do mean Very conservative. Well this had turned into a novel so I wills stop the take home message is unless you are eating a lot of fish consistnatly (top predator type fish or carp as an exception) you really shouldn't worry about eating the fish out of utah lake. I think many would be surprized to find the fish they buy at the store or eat at that high end resturant probably contain as much or more contaminants than most fish that come out of utah lake,
Jed Burton
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