Eating small fish

[shuyge]

Ok, I've seen references to people who eat small fish. Fish too small to bother filleting. Stuff in the 3-5 in range.

At first, I was like why would anyone bother with fish that small. But from what I can tell, there isn't much work to be done. I'm also intrigued about it.

I know of a small pond nearby that has tons of small bluegill that are stunted because there isn't anything to control the population. It's also a very shallow pond. My son and I went and caught a bunch of them on a fly using a spincast rod of all things and had fun. We let all of them go except one for the fish tank.

So now I'm thinking that this pond could use a little cleaning and I'm curious about how to prepare and eat the tiny buggers.

For those of you who are still with me, could you outline the process and which parts of the fish stay and which go and the cooking preparation?

Thanks,
Stan

[AntiochBA]

Deep fry and dip in your favorite chip dip....cause what you got there is what we call a potato chip where I'm from:D

[TnT]

Deep fry and dip in your favorite chip dip....cause what you got there is what we call a potato chip where I'm from:D

Same here

[shuyge]

OK, I'm looking for a bit more depth here.

Do ya scale them?
Cut the heads off?
Gut them?

[bigfish5]

my uncle used to love to eat small bream. he said they tasted better. he would scale them , gut them, cut their heads off and wash them up. Batter them up and fry them in a cast iron skillet. he said there was nothing better. he liked the small ones better. also i used to work with a man that said the same thing. he would bring them to work in a bream sandwich. he loved them.

[shuyge]

Thanks bigfish5.

How about the dorsal fin with the spikes? Does it need to go too, or will it soften up during the cooking process?

[speck chaser]

remove the fins

[bigfish5]

my uncle liked to fry them up cripsy. he liked the crunchy tails and fins. i myself dont like the tails and fins. you can pull them out with pliers.

[rockmike]

My wife's grandfather would catch small crappie and bream and scale , head, and gut them and her grandmother would cram them into mason jars and can them. Made good fish patties.

[LBM]

Each pond has its individual capacity to carry a given weight of fish. For example say that weight was 100 lbs of fish that would mean that it could carry one fish of 100 lbs or 2 - 50 lb fish and so on. Normally when a larger fish is caught in small ponds it is kept and the smaller fish are returned to the body of water. This will cause the remaining fish to become stunted as the population of small fish increased and the carrying capacity of the pond is surpassed.

If someone was really wanting try to improve the pond by attempting to increase the ratio of larger fish to smaller fish they should just toss the small ones on the bank for the coons, foxes, birds and etc to chow down on or keep them yourself. As far as nature is concerned there is really no waste going on by doing this. The concept of this being wasteful and wrong only occures in the mind and evaluation process of man and by not tossing the small fish on shore is really counter productive to trying to have a more balanced population of larger and healthy fish.

One individual doing this the few times they fish a pond would not be able to keep up with the hatch rate actually going on in the pond. So guess what I'm saying is that one can definitely have a negative impact on on a small pond by keeping the larger fish but by tossing the smaller fish you as one individual won't have an impact on changing the population.