the chemicals may not be toxic, but if the person who eats the fish has an allergy to any chemical, it could explain the sickness.

Sorry they were mean to you, seemed a bit harsh.

I fish Rowlette creak, and filleted a few crappie last week. They looked pretty clean. Reading your post - my first though went to how you cared for the fish from water to table. I cut meat for 10 years, and what I see people do is horrifying.

It is extremely more likely you food poisoned yourself than the crappies had chemical contamination that made you sick. I say this because crappies generally die off from chemicals very quickly - and won't survive in most dirty waters. The few chemicals they can carry - PCBs, dioxins, lead, mercury and others tend to affect you over years, not hours.

And I'm not saying you didn't take the same care most fishermen do - but very few fishermen take good care unless trained professionally.

Very very few people take proper care of their catch. Usually it doesn't matter, since even bad habits only cause problem once in a while. However, when you clean a lot of fish (or cut meat) for many meals, the bad habits expose themselves.

Fish have to go on ice when caught, and stay on ice until cleaned. Anything over 40 deg is dangerous. Never use a fillet knife for anything but filleting, never cut bait or anything like that. Clean the knife before and after each use, especially where the blade meets the handle. Take a look at yours - is it dirty? If so - bad bacteria live on it, and will get into the fish meat.

When you clean fish, the knife should never go through the guts and then touch the meat. Meat shouldn't touch the cutting board, especially if guts or fecal matter touches the board. If you must use a cutting board to remove bones, use a separate board. Also have to watch out for spraying fecal matter squirting out of the fish.

When I clean them, I wash each fish right before I cut. With the anus pointing towards the drain, I squeeze just hard enough to remove and gas/fecal, making sure it squirts into the running water and not on the fish.
I make each cut with the tip of the knife gliding along the bone, and never cut into the ribs, gills or stomach.
I try to leave a piece of skin attached to the tail, so I can flip the fillet skin side down and separate the meat from the skin without touching the board.

I rinse each fillet well, and drop it in clean iced water. The fillet never touches the cutting board. After I'm done I rinse each fillet again,removing any bones I missed, and drop it in new fresh iced water.

Of course - anyone can sneer and not do all of this, and they may never get sick. Or they may get sick the next time they eat fish. It is a gamble. Like I said, the rates of getting sick are pretty low. The point is to do it right, and not take a chance.

Carey makes an excellent point in that jumping on a forum because you had a stomach ache at some point after you ate a fish from a certian body of water is kind of reckless and could be very damaging to those who make some or all of there living as part of the fishing industry on that body.
What Carey said was mild. Go up to the Striper forum and post up about toxins in Lake Texoma and see how many guides jump all over your arse.