If they are under 3# they are pretty good eating, especially when still hot out of the grease. I have access to a private lake and we usually have an annual tournament on it and keep lots of smaller ones for a fish fry afterwards. We need to keep way more to keep them from getting stunted.

They are ok to eat if cooked right. Prefer to eat properly prepared Stripers or Hybrids.

That's what I'm talking about! You didn't need all those fancy electronics, and a $80,000 bass boat to catch them either!
Old school and proud of it!

Eat a lot of bass keeping pond in balance. For the grill I like 4lbers.

I bet if I fried them up with a batch of other fish no one would tell the difference.

They're delicious. I don't normally target black bass, but if I happen to catch some incidentally to whatever I'm after, the keepers go on the stringer.

I enjoy bass. Don't keep them that often but if a keeper bass gets a hook too deep or somehow dies while I'm fishing a tourney in the livewell(and doesn't look diseased or something) then I'll gladly use the resource to make a meal! Grilled/fried/blackened/pan seared = All good!! :-) Easy to fillet(skin on or off), nice white flesh, and to me quite tasty!

Wife likes them too so while she makes some hushpuppies or fries I go grill them real quick!

The answer is more complicated than it might seem (at least to me). I've lived on the banks of fresh and salt water now for the majority of my life (63) and have been lucky enough to live directly looking at the bass spawning grounds twice. Right now I'm looking out the window about 30 feet from them. All that to say this: what I'm about to say is from years of direct observation - not feelings, or YouTube videos, or forum chatter. Large bass vs small bass for eating: if you prefer small bass, fine. The small bass tend to be "schoolies" that get a lot of swimming done in a day and their flesh is more firm since they do a lot of exercise chasing minnows. Does keeping small bass help a fishery? If caught during the summer, near the weeds - no - it is actually detrimental to the fishery. Why? The small bass under 3 lb. are almost always males and males guard the eggs of up to 4 females (we watch the spawn every year). So if you pull a male off the bed (and there are thousands of YouTube's by the "pro's" teaching how to do this to win tournaments), you're having the effect of killing up to 4 females egg production since those eggs are now lost (crappies, bluegill, minnows move it to eat them almost immediately). We typically see the females come in to the bed at night, and they're out an hour after sunup. They hang around for some time in the deeper water at the first drop off in front of the spawning beds (so the beds could be viewed as bait to catch large fish, as long as the males aren't snatched off them). Bottom line (for me): doesn't hurt to keep females - nor does it hurt anything to keep "schoolies" chasing the minnows. Catching males off the beds I don't do.

My personal eating preferences: crappie, shellcracker. In the bass category we catch a lot of white bass, which cleaned right (center section (fat - toxins) removed and all red flesh removed) are excellent and we catch a lot of hybrid stripers (again, anything red removed) which cleaned right are like a better grouper to me.

We have eaten bass fillets for decades. I have some fillets vacuum packed in the freezer now. The wife pesters me to cook them occasionally.

Ditch Pickles taste great! RIG!

Plenty of them in the lake along with Catfish and Crappie.

If you want to quit fishing move to the lake. You won't have time to go. However during the rare times I do fish if I/we are in a lot of bass then I might keep a few under 3# Anything over goes back unless injured where I don't think it will survive.

We eat them sometimes. I’ll keep a couple 2 pounders once in a while. And When I fish a tournament I’ll usually keep some of the fresh dead fish to keep guys from dumping them. They eat as good as a crappie fried and grilled they are as good as it gets.

Largemouth Bass

Depending on lake, if it’s looks like they stunted then I’ll keep the small ones that are legal

This was probably 14 years ago on a private lake in Ellis County. Made for a hell of a fish fry