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Clean enough to eat out of

I've fished the banks of Lake Michigan and several of its rivers for mainly salmon and trout for many years. There we had safety notices ranging from do not eat any fish to maybe eating up to 1 Lb. per week due to the high levels of PCB's, etc. Some areas the water just smelled of these harmful chemicals.

As the higher concentrations of chemicals are located in the belly fat and skin, one can reduce this amount by processing boneless/skinless fillets.

The safest and best tasting fish are boneless/skinless/no belly meat fillets. Also, remove the dark meat and center blood line.
By doing this, you'll have great mild tasting white/pink fillets.
 
WTM said:
catch em out of tannic backwater and theyll taste fishy if you dont know what you are doing, and sometimes like algae or leaves. you can soak them after you filet them but the easiest way ive found is cold shock killing them. it sends them into hypothermia and the blood is pulled out of the meat into the organs. keep em on ice for a few hours and filet them. easy peazy.
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This is the way all fish should be handled, regardless of water quality. In the salt, you add one bucket of sea water to every 10lbs of ice to make a brine which will produce the best quality food product. Not to mention a cold fish is much easier to fillet.
 
I disagree with keeping them alive until you are leaving. They release a stress hormone called cortisol when caught and put in a live well alive or on a stringer alive. I 100% believe this taints the taste. This is very evident when dealing with trout. Trout come from the cleanest waters you'll find in the state. But there's a major difference in how they taste that depends on how they are handled after the catch. Especially between throwing them on a stringer and keep fishing until you get your limit vs immediately putting them into a ice/brine solution. 9 times out of 10 I don't keep any of them but if I go to keep some, I prepare for it ahead of time and keep my cooler at my side. If I'm not wading, it makes a good stool.
 
When I bank fish/wade, all I carry is 1 or 2 rods, along with a metal fish basket. I prefer to travel light, no tackle box, no cooler, no live bait. I mainly fish with homemade jigs/flies. Keep a dozen or so in my pocket and thats all I need.

Cooler is kept in car with ice/water. I like to stay mobile and go out to locate fish vs. staying in one place, so I stay light on what to carry.

I don't use a stringer, the metal basket allows the fish to open/close their gills and mouth keeping them alive. I cannot tell if the fish I caught an hour earlier vs. minutes before leaving tasted any different. Everyone who has been to one of my fish fries or have received some vacuum sealed fillets have always mentioned this is some of the best mild tasting freshwater fish they ever had and cannot wait till the next time.

We all have our own ways on how to keep/process fish and suggest everyone use the technique which works best for them. The method I use has worked well for 40+ years.
 
With trout, the taste varies depending on how long they have been out of the hatchery. fish just dumped from a stock truck have meat that smells and taste like the fish meal they feed them, whereas a trout thats been in the river all year will have pink meat and all those yummy omega fats that come out when you cook it. Its like 2 different meats
 
Hog snapper, Mutton snapper, wahoo, cobia all wayyyy better than any fresh water fish that I have ever eaten. I did have some bass taken out of Woods which wasn't bad but not near as good as saltwater fish. Of course being born a Key West conch I am probably a little biased.
 

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