Thread: Few nice gills'

Very nice EKY, what body of water you catching those on. I'm originally from EKY (Harlan), but live in Western KY now near KY Lake.

A meal fit for a king.

Had to try for one more mess after my family worked that last mess over...hope these are as good as the last

btw-caught big warmouth and decided to clean a couple and they had little black spots throughout the meat, look like pepper, do yall ever notice that or am i the only person dumb enuf to eat a warmouth

Originally Posted by ekySlabber

Had to try for one more mess after my family worked that last mess over...hope these are as good as the last

btw-caught big warmouth and decided to clean a couple and they had little black spots throughout the meat, look like pepper, do yall ever notice that or am i the only person dumb enuf to eat a warmouth

.... are parasites. And though they're not harmful to humans, they do not make the meat look so good. Some cut them out, some just cook them.
I've eaten Warmouth ... they're fine eating. But, I will have to say that I've not seen, or eaten, Warmouth with parasites.

Here's a copied response to a similar question, about black spots in fish meat (from another website) :

"The black spots you see in the muscle of the bass and bluegill are larval stages of a parasite, cleverly called “blackspot.” The adult parasite lives in a fish-eating bird such as a kingfisher or gull. Parasite eggs are shed in the bird’s feces and when they contact water, the eggs hatch and the first larval stage emerges and infects snails. These larvae mature and in time are shed from the snail into the water. The larvae have tails and swim until they find a fish host, and then burrow into the skin or muscle of the fish. Here, they develop into a third larval stage and black cyst walls are produced, covering the larvae.

The black spots we see in the meat are actually the black parasite cysts. When a bird eats the infected fish, the larvae mature into adult parasites and the cycle begins again. Thoroughly cooking the fish will kill the parasites, and in any case, they cannot infect people; they can only develop in birds."

... cp

Thanks CP,

I've always known about the yellow grub parasites but not the black specks, thanks for the good info!

I've seen them in pond bluegill before. I'm not dead yet.