Weekly Update - Again

Because of the overwhelmingly strong response generated by my two previous weekly fishing reports, :shock: I feel a certain obligation to provide another weekly update – admittedly a couple of days early. So, keeping in mind that well over half the views on the previous updates are me looking at my own post, I am happy to provide this new update for all two or three of you who had nothing better to do. :LOL2:

Got me a salmon! A friend showed me the ropes for tossing lures for salmon in the San Joaquin River. It was a lot of fun catching this on relatively light gear. Opposite running tides and wind made things kind of rough, but my little boat did OK.

Looks good to me. No salmon in TN. They taste good, though.

Very good eating. This one we estimated at about 8 lbs. Got a couple of nice salmon filets. We buy a fair amount of salmon at the market. Prices are high. That "improves" the taste of this one considerably. Hahah

Going to try for some trout tomorrow.

Nice


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Hit the lake this morning for trout and got skunked. Did pick up crappie. Maybe if we fish for crappie we will catch some trout. LOL

Congrats, nice fish.

My middle son and I got out yesterday to Lake Berryessa. This is a large (20 mile long) reservoir near the Northern California wildfires you may have seen in the news last month.

We got three trout and lost three (one right at the boat). Caught them from 5' to 18' OTW in about 200' of water. Water was clear and 61 deg at surface. Lots of action from 7:00 to 8:30 then it was like the trout closed up shop and went home. This place is about equidistant between my son and I so is a good place for us to meet up for a day of fishing. We plan on heading back after the current rains are over.

I know a lot of you guys are black bass fisherman. I saw some bass boats zooming by, but not sure how they were doing. I've only been to this lake a couple of times but hear it is good for ditch pickles -- er, I mean black bass. :LOL2:

Looking good. I'd guess that you eat the trout.

Seems funny to me that most LM Bass fishermen don't eat bass anymore. Some trout fishermen won't eat trout anymore.

I won't kill a redfish, but have no trouble eating a saltwater speckled trout and/or a flounder. Guess we just like fishing, in any form.

Yep, we eat the trout. My wife along with nearby relatives and friends love to eat them. My trout catch is always in demand, which is kind of nice. If I have enough, I drop them off same day on my way home from the lake. All of the trout I catch are stockers. If I catch a really small one I'll release it if I think it will survive (not many will). There are some rivers/streams with mandatory C&R and some where I would voluntarily practice C&R just out or respect for the native fish that might be there.

I used to keep stripers way back when. In all my years of fishing I don't think I've ever put a LMB in the bag. Now, that doesn't mean I would toss back the lake record. Biggest I ever caught was probably only 3 to 4 lbs. I always put them back and told them to grow bigger. haha.

I'll eat just about any fish depends on my mood and the water I'm fishing. Take for example I love fishing for smallies in local small rivers and streams. Where they can get to a decent size, but bigger ones are few and far between usually. They don't reproduce or grow really fast in these rivers or streams so I when fishing for smallies I let them go around here. Now if I catch a spotted(kentucky bass) in these same waters it gets kept as they are known to not grow as large as smallies will in rivers, and they compete for the same food. That and they don't fight as well, and I don't have a problem keeping a lesser desired species to try and help out the species I'd rather see. Catfish when I go catfishing I'm usually out to try and stock up the freezer. With that said I follow the regs, but if I get a big one I get a picture and let it go. Too much wasted meat on the big ones as they have a lot more fatty red meat/yellowish meat that doesn't taste so great. So if the catfish if they are getting over the 30" mark I let them go to get bigger and reproduce more. For eating I like the smaller couple pound catfish they are abundant I get good fillets off them, and they taste great. When I'm pan fishing I'm usually after fillets, so very few crappy or gills get thrown back if they are of decent size. But I don't think I've ever kept a gill or crappie limit as I usually don't feel like cleaning that many little fish. When I sauger/walleye jig on the ohio very few get released they are tasty.

But when I lived in michigan for a short while I would keep smallies up there as they very abundant and even hated by many walleye fisherman up there, which seemed like that's what everyone up there was after. Heck up there they called white bass silver bass and hate them. I kept loads of them and every guy back at the ramp thought something was wrong with me for keeping them, and smallies. They usually just pissed the walleye guys off as they would catch lots of smallies, and white bass when they were after walleye. But I didn't always keep smallies up there or a limit for that matter just when I felt like having fish or wanted some more to put in the freezer. Just depends I like to practice conservation, but also like to eat fish so I try to make it a balance of both.

I brought some crappie fillets home earlier this year just to see if my wife would like it. She says "no so much", so I guess I'll keep releasing the crappie. For whatever reason, I just don't like catfish. I haven't fished for them since I was a kid. I don't eat them.

I eat LMBs pretty frequently - they’re stocked in a lot of the ponds around my in laws. I like them in the 1-2lb range the best. Bigger than that, and the texture starts to suffer, so anything bigger than 3lbs I throw back for the trophy fishermen unless they’re gut hooked or something.

I’ve never actually caught a trout, but they’re about my favorite freshwater fish for eating. I’ve got a nice fly rod, but I’m pretty incompetent with it. I was on a motorcycle ride around Catoctin Mountain here in Maryland and there were fly fishermen after some of the fall stocked trout. It’s one of the few activities that can make me jealous when I’m out on the bike.


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I'll keep some largies now and again from places where I know they are abundant, and keeping a few won't hurt. I guess I grew up catfishing and have always liked eating them. I wish I could find another way cooking them that was healthier than frying. I've cooked them other ways that I liked, but usually those ways only were some what healthier. Not by much cause almost all the recipes I've liked involved being cooked in oil, or butter, or in a creamy stew that probably wasn't any better for me than just frying them which seems to be the best. Now trout I loved grilled, I can do grilled crappie or sauger/walleye for fish tacos, paddlefish is excellent smoked or grilled, the kitties not so much.

I particularly enjoy a blackened grilled catfish at one of our local places. I don't know what they do, but I order it everytime that we go to that place.

Even though it says Blackened, it isn't all that spicy.

I've done it blackened it was good, but any of the good grilling recipes I've found that turned out well had me coat it with melted butter. Maybe not as bad as deep frying, but probably not a ton better in terms of healthiness. Salmon/trout are fish I love on the grill or smoker however.