Harvesting bass,....

Well crap.  Looks like we still don't have  a winter thread.

I am great at getting the winter threads fired up...should I start here?   

All joking aside, I grew up doing a lot of bass fishing and have the mindset that bass are always catch n release.  I know some guys that keep bass once in a while and I jokingly give them a hard time but to each their own. 

I kept and ate a 24" LMB from the delta a few years ago. Properly bled and iced it was surprisingly good.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea it was the equivalent of road kill. 

I was dunking bait to see if there were any catfish around, I'd seen a few sealions crusing around so wasn't hopeful, they're known to be smart enough to eat the back half of small cats and leave the rest behind. Anyway I'm sitting there and up comes a sealion about 30-40 yds away with a big ol' fish in it's mouth, it thrashed it around till it flew out of it's mouth and the sealion disappeared and left the fish on the surface. I couldn't tell what it was but low- and - behold a combination of wind and current brought that fish right to the rip rap at my spot. Damn, what a waste, the sealion had basically gutted it and left it. It's gill plates still moved a bit so I figured, fresh enough, pulled it up took a few pics and it ended up some on a plate and some went into the freezer. The meat was very white I guess due to the bleed out and was suprizingly good.  I di an NCKA post at the time, for a pic take a look. http://www.norcalkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=16869.msg

i never considered that a winter LMB would be tastier than a summer caught fish.  the last LMB i ate was a summer delta bass and the flesh was kinda mushy. 

i kept that fish because it absolutely engulfed my hook. 

i am hitting Lake Sonoma this weekend after my fever-scare-all-clear by my medical people... staying home binge watching Criminal Minds can eat at a person..eat hard. 

any flavor diff between small mouth and largemouth?  i am a Cantonese dude, so i have eaten a lot of bass.  LMB

Smallmouth bass is excellent tablefare. I rank em right up there with any rockfish species. White fillets, good flavor. They're especially tasty if they've been munching on crayfish.

Any time I catch an incidental largemouth bass on the local lakes while fishing for coho salmon, I fillet em up. They eat a ton of juvenile coho salmon, and I'd prefer to have more coho than bass. The largemouth taste pretty good when I catch em in November/December, but not as good as smallies IMO.

Bass populations are doing plenty fine pretty much everywhere they've been introduced to permit harvest. The black bass tackle/tourney industry has done a great propaganda job over the decades convincing anglers that killing a black bass is akin to killing an endangered panda bear...bass management is based more on economics than species conservation.

I still eat bass and bluegills occasionally. And crappie, don't forget the delicious crappie!
When eating bass I am always reminded of my exploits as a kid riding my bike with my rod across the handlebars. I ate a lot of what I caught.

Also reminds me of my childhood. Bike to the lagoon for crappie bass and bluegill. Keeping the occasional bass seems reasonable.

Probably doesn’t matter in the delta, or large lakes but I’ve alway heard that catch and releasing equals a population of small fish. Culling out some equals large fish by reducing competition.

Wow.  In my youth in Texas I ate quite a few LMB.  I always thought they were fine, fried or broiled with lemon butter.  Those waters were not cold at all.  I used to take them to my grandmother and she'd cook them for me.

I caught one at Freshwater Lagoon a while back and considered keeping but instead, let it go.

I have not targeted them since moving to California many, many years ago.

Yeah, I'd eat em.   

Not so sure I’d eat one out of the delta.  They spray the floating mats with roundup.

How many good ol boys it take 2 measure one fish?  AOTY right thar!