08-04-2018, 11:36 PM
Greetings everyone!
I came here looking for advice on panfish. I've been Trout fishing my whole life and I'm looking to get into keeping and eating other fish when I catch them. I know panfish can be pretty tasty, but it seems like every one I catch is riddled with parasites. What gives?
I caught four little Pumpkinseed today, and decided to keep all of them, intending to fry them up for dinner. After scaling, I cut the heads off and every one of them had a curled up, red-colored, wriggling worm inside of them. I caught a larger Pumpkinseed a few weeks ago at a different location, which had what appeared to be the same type of parasite inside of it. What is this? Is the fish still OK to eat if they have this parasite in them?
After having cleaned hundreds of Brook Trout in my life and not having seen parasites, I'm a little put off by finding worms inside of all (all 5... yeah I'm a newb here) the panfish I've ever gutted. I'm what you might call a grown-ass-man, and not many things give me the willies anymore - but parasites definitely still do. The meat on these fish still looked OK, and I think the worms probably fell out of the digestive tract when I was gutting them - but since I'd rather err on the side of caution, I threw all the fish into the compost after seeing the worms.
I've never eaten panfish, but I've heard they're great eating and I would really like to start making these fish a part of my diet. During gutting I was surprised by how little guts Pumpkinseed have in them - these fish seem like they're all meat and no guts compared to Trout. They all seem to be infected with worms though, so that's a little off-putting to me. What gives? I've heard that Perch are best caught in the spring and winter due to prevalence of parasites in the summer - does the same rule apply to Pumpkinseed/Bluegill/Crappie and other Cichlids? The first Pumpkinseed I kept & gutted was in late July, and the other four were just today - August 4th.
Advice, please. I hate killing fish when I can't eat them, and I'd like to start eating some of the panfish that I always seem to catch.
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I came here looking for advice on panfish. I've been Trout fishing my whole life and I'm looking to get into keeping and eating other fish when I catch them. I know panfish can be pretty tasty, but it seems like every one I catch is riddled with parasites. What gives?
I caught four little Pumpkinseed today, and decided to keep all of them, intending to fry them up for dinner. After scaling, I cut the heads off and every one of them had a curled up, red-colored, wriggling worm inside of them. I caught a larger Pumpkinseed a few weeks ago at a different location, which had what appeared to be the same type of parasite inside of it. What is this? Is the fish still OK to eat if they have this parasite in them?
After having cleaned hundreds of Brook Trout in my life and not having seen parasites, I'm a little put off by finding worms inside of all (all 5... yeah I'm a newb here) the panfish I've ever gutted. I'm what you might call a grown-ass-man, and not many things give me the willies anymore - but parasites definitely still do. The meat on these fish still looked OK, and I think the worms probably fell out of the digestive tract when I was gutting them - but since I'd rather err on the side of caution, I threw all the fish into the compost after seeing the worms.
I've never eaten panfish, but I've heard they're great eating and I would really like to start making these fish a part of my diet. During gutting I was surprised by how little guts Pumpkinseed have in them - these fish seem like they're all meat and no guts compared to Trout. They all seem to be infected with worms though, so that's a little off-putting to me. What gives? I've heard that Perch are best caught in the spring and winter due to prevalence of parasites in the summer - does the same rule apply to Pumpkinseed/Bluegill/Crappie and other Cichlids? The first Pumpkinseed I kept & gutted was in late July, and the other four were just today - August 4th.
Advice, please. I hate killing fish when I can't eat them, and I'd like to start eating some of the panfish that I always seem to catch.
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