All I know is that if bream grew to the size of a big bass, the fight would be incredible.

If you could find a 5 pound bream and tied it tail to tail with a five pound bass, the bream would pull that poor bass inside out....lol.

ha crago your a 65 year old man!!!!! thats a good trick. how do you look so young?

I fillet all mine. If their too small to fillet they go back in the water. I'll catch them later when their bigger.

I fillet all mine too, mainly because my family is too picky to eat anything else. It is some work but with an electric knife I have learned to be pretty fast with it. I keep relatively small fish, i.e. 5 or 6 inchers just because I think they taste a bit better. They also taste better in the winter / spring IMO.

Tony, I'm exactly like you except that every time I fillet a bunch I swear that next time I'm going to cull everything under 7". It hasn't happened yet! LOL. I think the smaller ones sure do taste better too, but good grief it takes a lot to get a pile of meat. I think last time I had a bunch of mixed sizes, I kept a little over 50 fish and I took the time to measure some of them. I had a good number of larger ones - several that were 9 1/2" some 8+, a bunch of 7's and a a bunch of 6's I may have had a few 5's but was trying real hard to cull all those. I wound up with ONE SINGLE qt bag of fillets out of all that.

There's a very off color joke about a bear and a hunter with the punchline being the bear telling the hunter "You're not out here for the hunting are you." When I was complaining to my brother about all the effort and time it took to wind up with a clean single qt. bag of those small bluegill fillets, he said : "Yeah, but you aren't out there for the meat are you." LMAO.

He's right in a way, but I really prefer to go after fish that I like the taste of - that being bluegills and crappie. I don't hardly fish for anything else anymore. I will on occasion, but this past year since April, 90% of my fishing hours has been devoted to Bluegills. I guess i got spoiled at Fairfield where 50 fish can make 3-4 gallons of fillets instead of a SINGLE qt. But I keep doing it over and over like some kind of dang addiction or something. It's crazy.

This morning I was fishing on Lake Austin for LM Bass with a drop shot rig, 1/0 Octopus hook, 4 inch worm. A fish took the worm and was pulling pretty hard, so I loosened my drag on the casting reel. Finally, it came to the top and was the largest bream I've ever seen. I said, to myself, I freakin can't believe this. The bass, as usual on Lake Austin in the summer were not hitting anything I threw at them --- only caught two or three dinks. Next time I go, I'm gonna target the Bream with an ultra light spinning rig and a fly rod. Believe me, catching bream is fun, even for a grown man.

What a great thread!

You could start a thread like this for almost any 'non-mainstream' species, like carp, buffalo, bowfin, gar, suckers.... they all have their good points, and are all fun to catch!

True.


BTW, I didn't mean fry them whole. I meant do y'all just fry the filets or eat them other ways (baked, grilled, etc.)

No really scale em', cut the head off em', dip em' in meal, and let em' fry.

Some people fillet them and fry the fillets. Others cut the heads off, scale or skin them, and fry them whole. The fillets are so small that it takes a lot to make a meal, but they are about as good as fried fish gets. Crappies are a similar small fish, but a little larger, and they are a great eating fish as well.

P.S. To answer your question about frying them or eating them other ways, I can only speak for myself. While I grill other types of fish, I always fry gills. Never have tried cooking them any other way.

Seems to me as I've gotten a bit older that guys choose their sport by how it fits their personality. Macho men need to hunt the biggest and meanest of whatever's available in their area, regardless of what their game tastes like. Fisherman the same. When I was younger I needed the monster Musky, Northerns, Bass, etc. But now I fish the gills because hands down, they're one of the best tasting inland fish there is. It's simple to prove. Me and my buddy used to do it all the time. We'd go out and catch some Northerns, Bass, Gills, whatever, and cook them up side-by-side. Proof is in the eating. And when I would tell him to throw such-and-such back because it was too little he'd always reply, "I can't tell the difference when I'm eating them".

I always just fished for bluegill when nothing else was biting until I ate some a friend fried. Now sometimes I set out just for bluegill. Hopefully I'll be eating some this weekend.

***Voice of octogenarian that can't hit his bottom with both hands***

"FRY 'EM CRISP! EAT THE WHOLE THING!"

I just came back from Caddo, and even though nothing else was biting we pulled in bream by the bucket load! Made for a great time and even better fry! When nothing else is active get the ultra light at and hit the gills! It will definately keep the spirits up in the dead of summer!