Friend was cleaning his catch a few days ago and sent these two pics to me. We talked and I've never seen this before. I have seen some small red worms and a few white worms in crappie meat before. But not this. These pieces seemed inert, and had a texture like plastic. Only one fillet had these present. The whole fish went in the gut bucket.

Seen it last year in several Sand bass, have not yet seen it in Crappie, Have no idea, but I cleaned it out.

Never seen that before, and I would not have eaten it.

That fillet would of brought tears to my eye's when I threw it away!

That is ugly.
Hopefully someone can run it by a fisheries biologist.

Slab cancer
Gross!

Nope, what lake were they caught from?

Tell your buddy that I have never seen a filet that small.

I have seen it in bass before. It is some type of worm that lives in the flesh.

They are called red worms, cod worms or nematodes, they are parasites.
Usually harmless to humans unless you eat your fish raw/half cooked.
I've seen them in crappie on "my lake", scared the crappp out of me when I 1st seen them & did some research on them. They are usually around the stomach area, they look like what's in the op's pic after they die.
If you find then curled up when you remove them you'll see they are alive....
I do the "light test" on every crappie I filet to make sure there are none.....
I hear as our lakes get hotter the more we will see parasites.....
These were only found in cod & yellow perch but have seen several vids & reports of them being on several other species...

Good information

Never like that..... glad you put that fish out of his misery.

protein,..

Never Ken and don't want to either.