I love to eat panfish and smaller bass, but the only places I trust eating them from are lakes. I have a ton of ponds and creeks around my house that aren't C&R only but I always was scared to keep anything because of worms and parasites. It only took finding worm loaded fish once to stray away from creek and pond fish. Did I just have bad luck? Or does this seem pretty common to people? I hate to waste fish for no reason.

I have found pond AND Lake fish both infested with parasites. It happens. No body of water is immune. Some ponds may be more prone to that than others, but it can happen anywhere.

Hit or miss, pond and creek fish are not "dirty" just from being in a small body of water.

Eric

Plus #1 on the above already said. As for me I eat fish from large lakes,hill country creeks with good currents,and ponds that are not in populated areas that are spring fed. Just my two cents.

LOL...let me see if I understand this? You think it is "safe" to eat fish from major public impoundments which are most often fed by highly polluted rivers and it is "unsafe" to eat fish from a closed water system that likely has zero pollutants?

Worms are present in most all fish...and properly cooked are absolutely no problem. Give me a pond raised fish any day over anything from a public reservoir. Just my opinion.

+1 But Larry, all your ponds are carefully managed to only produce good-eating fish.

That's a fair point...but at least with a pond that you don't know about, you can ask the owner if its "clean" or not.

I'd bet ponds, hands down, have cleaner water than most all public lakes.

Yeah Meadowlark, that threw me off as well. In summer, fish are gonna have worms and other parasites; it's part of Nature. Noticed much less in Spring (at least visibly) and next to none in Winter (again, visibly).

To me water condition will play a very important factor on eating fish on matter what type of water body.

Plus #1.