Love catching them, never tried eating them

Bout right

Lighten up Francis. LOL

Feller from Mizzo told me they fillet each side and slice the fillet again and 3 times if it was a big one, approx 1/2" thick. Said they then put 1/4" diamond cuts on both sides of the fillet. Then worked cornmeal into the diamond cut and fried crisp. He said you eat crunchy bones and all.

I got into some grass carp in the past year, and that's been my gateway drug to eating carp. Now I think I would be hard-pressed to throw any carp back. It's all about the preparation. My go-to is to put the carp fillets in a crock pot on the back porch. Anyone within a block or so downwind will notice that lake-bottom carp smell, which is good, because that carpy taste will be gone by morning and the bones will have all dissolved. What you're left with is about four pounds of meat that tastes almost exactly like canned tuna. I'll usually take that, mix in breadcrumbs, spices, an egg, parsley, and make fried fish-cakes. My fiance (who has forbidden me from bringing home anymore catfish) will have seconds and thirds. When the pandemic gets a little quieter, I'll have folks over for a big fry.

(I have a recipe for the leftover broth based on the PJ and Apple Stoop's "Trashfish Soup" if anyone is interested)

Another option is to scale and poach whole with rice wine, soy, garlic, ginger, in the Chinese fashion. Then you eat it with chopsticks. Since the bones are still attached to the spine, the meat basically pulls free.

Next time I think I'll just freeze it and run it through a grinder, maybe mix in a little bacon to facilitate the frying. I experimented a little bit with that when I made carp-dogs (in another thread in this category). They say you need to run it through twice to break up all the bones, but once seemed to do the trick.

The Wisconsin DNR published an entire book of recipes for carp and such, if you're interested in Midwestern cuisine's solution to the carp problem. It's called A Fine Kettle of Fish, available here in scanned PDF:
https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/fishing/documents/anglereducation/FineKettleFish.pdf

what kind of carp and what lake? you have me curious.

The grass carp is mostly from Lake Austin and the common carp from the lower Colorado. We catch some commons out of Lady Bird, but they're practically a regulated sport fish in Lady Bird, so usually release them there. Also I try not to eat _tooo_ many fish out of Lady Bird Lake.

I've tried to cook buffalo before. It was ok in recipes that involve alot of spicing or breading. But personally it wasn't worth the trouble of carving through that armor-plated hide and stout bones.

This

Armor-plated hide?I`m not sure what you had was a Buffalo.

That is what we call scoring the fish.There have been alot of carp sandwiches eaten in many a bar on Friday nights in the midwest and they taste damn good too.

Those big tough scales may as well be armor.

I've found that if you turn the fillet knife blade upsidedown, work the tip under one of those giant scales near the tail, and then cut the skin along the dorsal line toward the head, you can basically skin the buffalo/carp like a catfish, and the filleting goes pretty quick after that. And yes, the buffalo meat tastes noticeably better than carp, once you process out the Y bones.

Life's to short to eat carp.

Gotta pressure cook it and the bones will disappear.