get-n-birdy wrote:FF, gotta ask, how are the LMB to eat in the winter?
When filleted, breaded/battered, and deep fried........they're the same as any non-rough fish.
Smallmouth bass is my favorite fish to eat. I think they're noticeably better than walleye.
Largemouth aren't as good....their meat is softer and has a yellow hue to it versus the pink hue of the very white smallmouth meat of a smallmouth. I get what guys are referencing when they say largemouth taste like mud, but I don't think they're accurate. I would describe it as more of a bland lack of taste they're tasting, where as a walleye has a savory lack of taste....the perfect vehicle for delivering whatever type of grease, seasoning, batter, or breading, you're most fond of to your taste buds.
I've fried up catfish and walleye to feed in blind taste tests to some of the biggest walleye/perch/panfish snobs there are....and they've seriously all picked catfish. I haven't done it a shitload of times or anything, just three, but these fish culinary snobs that only eat walleye (tah-tahhh) went three for three choosing catfish instead of walleye. You wanna know why?
Because as long as you get all the shit meat off a catfish fillet that will make the rest taste like ass, and as long as you're cleaning cats 5lbs and under and not any big fukcers with meet grains pushing an inch, with an eighth of an inch of grey fat between the grains of meat......as long as you follow those rules.....
Catfish tastes better because it's got more flavor due to it being oilier, without being too oily.
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LM bass don't taste like mud. They're just a big sunfish. It's the same shit.
If you caught a really fat and girthy 18" bluegill and ate it?
It'd taste the same as LM bass......
......which means it wouldn't be as good as other panfish. You know why panfish taste better? Hint: it has nothing to do with the flavor or bass tasting worse than bluegills, sunfish, or crappies.....
.....and it has everything to do with their size.
Panfish don't taste good......little fish taste good.
A 14" to 16" walleye taste a hell of a lot better than a 25" walleye. It's because they fry faster. You can "flash fry" a small walleye the same as a panfish....the same you can a 12" to 14" bass.......and that's why they taste better.....their ability to be cooked properly because they don't represent an amount of mass that inherently cools down your grease as soon as you place it in the fry pan or fry daddy. Even a 25" walleye cut into panfish sized pieces still doesn't taste as good as panfish......the grain is too thick to flash fry them and the wider fat deposits between the wider meat grains soak up grease in addition to the grease that's there and makes the meat soggy, greasy, and almost wet.....
.....small fillets are crispy and non-greasy = they taste better
So the bass were fine besides being a little big for my liking. Both of them in the bucket were hooked deep/gut hooked and bleeding badly out of their gills just from the process of being unhooked. The downside to tip-ups or any set line for that matter. I would've thrown them back otherwise.
But do yourself a favor and try eating some 12" to 14" bass in August when the lake you're catching them from has a surface temp of 70....make that 75 degrees.
They'll taste fantastic, because they're small enough to make it damn near impossible to fukc up cooking them.....fry and serve.
The other thing about LM compared to SM and other sunfish is that they're a lot slimier. It's like they've got 5% pike DNA or something....seem to like hanging out next to each other in the same areas too.
Make sure you rinse LM's very thoroughly and I'd recommend letting them sit overnight in a bowl of a fairly heavy dilution of salt water. What a lot of guys are tasting when they say LM'S taste like mud is slime on their meat. Really rinse the fillets so there's none of that shit on there....and if you do that and aren't cleaning big fish......
.....a LM is no different than a walleye.....no different than panfish, since they literally are the same type of animal....no different than a......you catch my drift.....
