white bass taste test

Just curious which taste better the large ones or the smaller ones. Many of my friends like the smaller ones.

Never noticed, but you have me curious now. I'll test it out Saturday after I come home with a limit of whites...

The ones I catch are nearly all the same size so I never really noticed a change in taste.

Reggie

They all are good! It just don't get any better!

I like to catch the big ones but prefer to eat the smaller ones.

I cant tell any taste difference, but I like eating the smaller ones. I prefer them because the fillets are just the right thickness and cook very well and float quickly. The last bunch of sand bass I got into at Twok, were very big and they looked like striper fillets.

Large white bass get that way from having plenty of forage where they tend to attain those football shapes which can mean more fatty filets.
Also the red blood line is heavier on larger fish, which if not removed tends to effect the taste on either size fish.
If you remove that red meat from the side of the filet (easier to remove from bigger fish, smaller ones not worth the trouble) of either size, you probably would have a hard time telling the difference according to size.

Banker that's a great pic

Well played, sir!

I grilled some on the half shell and they were great.had a unique flavor that you don't get with bass or crappie.They were all about 2#rs.

they all taste the same to me, I don't care for them, but some people do

Yum!!!!

I wash my whites/crappie in this for 10 min.Any scales,leftover blood, or fatty parts rise to the top and flow out. Then you cant tell between a white or crappie and they taste great. I hang it in a tree and you have to use a graden hose. It spins the water and fish with air mixed with water.

I agree with Jimbo. The large ones don't taste as well unless you cut the red meat out - like you would for hybrids and stripers.

Interesting, I just thought of another use for it. Where could one go look at these? Home Depot maybe?

I have a friend who has the improved patient but they are not out yet.

That explains why I couldn't find it on Amazon. lol

I agree with both Jimbo and Scott.

Cut that red meat off the side of a white bass filet with a sharp knife. A must.

Clean the whole fish or filets well before putting up or cooking.

Here's how to make a tornado in a bucket to clean your fish. Coat $3 at Home Dpot or Lowes

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5d6ZRgubvSo

I like em better than crappie..

I use my stripers and whites for fish ball tacos (found a recipe that is outrageously good) and use catfish, reds and trout for fillets.

Banker! A man after my own tastes!!!! Frying up a mess in a cast iron skillet!! That pic could have easily come from my stove top!!!!! Best cooking utensil ever devised. Hope that's peanut or canola oil.

Rudy

My very favorite thing to do with White Bass is to make chowder out of it. My sister
and I went to the Nueces yesterday and I made a big batch of it for our family for
dinner yesterday. YUM ! This bass was part of it --








Recipe --


24 oz bite size pieces of white bass
½ cup chopped vidalia sweet onion
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped red potato
2 cups chicken stock
2 tsp Uncle Chris Steak Seasoning
3/4 tsp black pepper
4 tbsp butter
1 cup heavy cream

Sauté potato, carrots, onions and celery until potatoes just tender in the butter. Add Chicken stock, seasonings, and heat to just bubbling. (warm cream in microwave at this time, not hot though) Add fish and let cook for 4 to 5 minutes, folding a couple times while cooking. Add warm cream, stir in, and then serve immediately.

Serves 4 or so

Throw your fillets in a 5 gallon bucket. Spray down heavily with a water hose, kinda pressure wash them. I use a thumb with faucet at full force. You will get something like this on the surface of the water. The stuff looks sudsy, like soapy water. When you stick your hand and arm in bucket, the stuff will stick to your skin, white, and gunky. All comes out of the meat.



Dump water out, start over, repeating the process. Looks sudsy still, but less so.



Now you are getting somewhere, dump water, repeat, water starts to clear up:



Wow, you can almost see the fillets! Dump water and repeat, and lo and behold, what's that at the bottom of the bucket?



Dump water, repeat, and Wowzers, you got clear water and snow white fillets! what happened to the red meat strips? got pale, didn't they?



Season, batter and fry and they are ALMOST as good as crappie, and will hold their own, flavor wise with any other species of fish!

catch clean and enjoy!

The great Doyle Holman taught me this maneuver, a sort of "poor man's Tornado Bucket!"

Rudy

Sandies = Delicious

It is not recommended to use water for drinking or cooking that flows thru a garden hose. Besides tasting like a rubber hose, it becomes contaminated with bacteria.

I dip mine in flower, melted blue bell vanilla ice cream and then Pablo breadcrumbs. Then into a frying pan. Tastes great to me and the family.

Flour and panko.

If that's the case, I should of died a million times over. Who knew water hose water, (the only source for water, for kids, during the 60's, 70's and 80's) was a deadly poison?
Guess I should quit using a garden, when cleaning fish.


Good Lord!?!


lol

Cut out red meat, pre soak in sea salt for a day. The salt pulls out the excess oil and blood. Meat is white. Grill , smoke or fry. Sea salt not table salt.

350 degree oil will take care of the bacteria

Fishing friends, this is just one of many reports on this topic.

When it's scorching hot out this summer, you may want to think twice before drinking from the garden hose.

A new study released by the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, M.I., on HealthyStuff.org found that the water from common garden hoses is chock full of toxic materials that could harm the human body.

Lead is found in the brass fixtures at the mouth of gardening hoses and, out of the of 90 garden hoses screened, 33 percent of products contained levels of lead that exceeded those considered safe for children.

Garden hoses are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), which monitors the nation's public drinking supply. The study's findings showed that levels of lead in water coming from garden hoses they tested exceeded legal safe levels 100 percent of the time.

But lead wasn't the only dangerous material found in the water. According to the study, the water also contained plastic additives including phthalates —or plasticizers — and bisphenol A (BPA) that were "found to migrate out of the hose material into water contained in the hose."

The Food and Drug Administration defines BPA as an industrial chemical used to make hard, clear plastic. According to the FDA website, the National Institutes of Health is concerned with the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in fetuses, infants, and young children.

The study found levels of BPA at 20 times higher than those of safe drinking water levels.

The study reported that 100 percent of the garden hoses sampled contained several plasticizers currently banned in children's products. According to Health Stuff, consumption of these hazardous plasticizers can disturb normal hormonal processes and are linked to birth defects, altered levels of reproductive hormones, increased breast cancer risk, and asthma.

Though you'd likely have to drink a fair amount of affected garden hose water to see health consequences, the Ecology Center warns that even low levels of lead may create health problems.

Garden hoses containing lead typically will have warnings on their packaging and others will indicate if they are lead-free.

I only drink out of a garden hose when eating bacon and smoking cigarettes.

Then I am surprised I survive childhood. I must have drank a million gallons of water thru a hose.

Mo

I think they taste better in the winter months. May be crazy. We fried a bunch last weekend and did testers on the people who don't like fish that much nor know the difference between sandies and stripes. Being a a coupe hours old and heavy on ice, they were both great, but the sandbass won over the stripes due to thickness and texture I think. It all about the skinning.

If you clean white bass properly they taste as good or better than any fish out there.

Huh?!?!?!

Ceviche style !!! Great.

I guess i am dead and don't know it, so are my kids and their friends. The garden hose was THE MAIN source of water when i was a kid, playing OUTSIDE all day, be it baseball(we had all day games that sometimes didn't even include a lunch break). Never even got stomach aches. My kids and their friends all drank from garden hoses when outside, and darn, they died and we didn't even hold wakes for em. Wow, talk about taking any and all fun out of life, now even a garden hose comes with a skull and crossbones warning. I have been cleaning sandbass this way for more years than many on this forum have been alive(I am 62), and well NO ONE, NOT ONE PERSON, that has participated in my fish fries has ever even gotten so much as heartburn.

I fried up a bunch of sandie fillets at Boston Bob's last sandbass tourney on Lake Lewisville, and cleaned all the fillets EXACTLY THIS WAY, with a garden hose, and most there thought my fillets tasted better than many of the others that were prepared there that day. I guess i missed a lot of wakes and funerals.

Disclaimer: (tongue firmly planted in cheek throughout this thread)

Rudy

Quote: When it's scorching hot out this summer, you may want to think twice before drinking from the garden hose.End quote

Thanks for sharing, it should be common sense with the 100+ degree summer that we have here in Texas. Especially if you leave your garden hose outside like I do. Between scorching summer heat and winter freeze... Inside the tube heat is trapped so it's a lot hotter than you think when hose is not in use and just sitting in the sun. Given time, chemical compounds of the plastic would deteriorate and release out into the water... plastic is by products of petroleum who knows what chemicals are in petroleum...

Side note, did y'all notice the explosive number of hospitals being built in DFW areas? Maybe people are not as healthy as they think they are...

Oh on taste, smaller ones are more cripy when grilled whole in the skillet or pan and they fit, thus smaller ones taste better. But bigger whitebass taste better deep fried whole butterfly style bone in and serving with sweet and sour sauce on top... mmmmm...

When we make fish soup they all taste good.

Keep eating fish young man and never look back at burgers and French fries lol

I'd be willing to bet that those creeks, rivers, and lakes have more contaminates in them than that little garden hose ever has.

I did a blind taste test on my nephews and sister in law. Whites versus Crappie. The white bass won. They liked the texture and taste better. I think a key to any fresh water fish is the colder the water you take them out of the better they taste. 2 cents for what little it is worth.

True that we have contaminants in our waters but the levels on concentration might not be as high as those in the tube. Think of it this way, if water already have contaminants do we need to intake more contaminants from the hose?

Whatever the final outcome, when i do sandie fillets this way(and will continue to do so), the flavor of the fillets can't be beat, I have even buffaloed a couple of "experts," who swore they could tell the difference between crappie and sandies no matter what. Well, they had a side serving of crow to go with their fillets, potatoes and salad. I had to show them pics of the fish i cleaned.

Anyways, i don't cook with that water, and the fillets are dried and pressed thoroughly with paper towels to get all the moisture out of them, so I don't think the exposure and remaining content should raise much concern in any case.

All i know is that they are delicious enough for me to pursue sandies from creek spawns till the crappie move into the creeks in the late fall and early winter.

Rudy

Had a group of friends over for a fish fry once. I fried crappie, blue cat, and sand bass. All the meat was trimmed till white and cut up into bite sized pieces. Everyone went for the sand bass. I'll have to say it was remarkable good. Really shocked me.

If the larger fish are bled out the red meat will not hurt the flavor. One thing I do is cut out the back bones. No need to waste that meat. Cook like a fillet. Suck the meat off the bones like corn on the cob.

I cook fish in the microwave. Just put (even frozen) fillets on a plate. Lemon pepper and Lawry's, maybe a little black pepper. Put a plate over the top and cook for 2 minutes or so. Quick lunch.

My favorite though is breaded with whole wheat flour, corn meal, lemon pepper, Lawry's and pepper. Fried in butter. Served with wedgies, veggies and maybe a slice of 12 grain. HEB Sandies for desert.

But we're not talking about drinking from a water hose. We're talking about rinsing filets. Filets that are about to be cooked in order to kill all of the bacteria.

What's the recipe? For the tacos

I want the recipe for the ceviche also?

For a change try pancake mix and Beer, dredge your fillet in the mixture and deep fry, will look like Long John Silvers, but taste a lot better. you can substitute Sprite for the beer if you want a little sweet taste.

Yep the red meat must go if anyone is on the fence about fishy taste. Crappie are much better in my opinion. Fun to catch sandies though! Great for family fishing and those just getting into fishing.

If you can't catch a catfish I guess they will get you by?

Yep Lambcotx. Nothing like a 40 pound flathead that the fat has permeated the meat. Yumm
The first one I caught on a trot line I fileted up and shared the steaks with my neighbors before I had tried any myself. I'm still amazed they would talk to me after trying to eat those steaks. LOL, I do enjoy catfish but prefer something much smaller.

The only real risk of drinking from a hose is you occasionally get a big wolf spider in your mouth. Let it run a few seconds first.