eating fish

how many walleyes do you eat a week from pool 4?

I don’t think anyone should have over one meal a week according to the consumption recommendations published in the state regs…….. if I remember right. Me? I usually put a couple to 4 meals together annually, consisting of 3 fish or less for each meal. I LOVE to eat fish, but moderation applies to all things and the rewards of conservation out weigh the pleasure of filling my tummy!

For me, about 2 – 16″ walleye a year. Tops. I love to eat fish but I love beef more.

Yeah, they say you shouldn’t eat it more than once a week. We eat it ,maybe once a month if that.
Mine consists mainly of sauger because of the 18″ limit on eyes here. I don’t eat fish that big. They’ve been in the water too long and more often than not the big ones are females.

But hey, that’s just me.

6 meals a year for me. I guess I should say about 12 meals a year because you always have to make enough to have that cold fish and cheese sandwich the day after. In our family we decided years ago to put our own “family slot” in place. (pool 4) We do not keep a fish over 18″. What I look for in an eater is 15″-16″. The bigger they are the more fat they have, and I was told that all the chemicals and such are stored in the fat cells. Don’t know for sure if it’s true, but it works for me.

Hey JDM…if these guys ate all the fish they caught…there wouldn’t be a fishery on P4!

I’m on the Croix. In the spring I eat more..guessing a meal a week..sometimes twice a week. Then it tappers off. It’s been a couple month since I’ve had any walleye. No one else in my family eat’s fish (yes they are Americans) so, on 15 inch sauger or eye generally does it for me.

Actually I should point out that I do not advise any consuption of fish from pool 4 for any reason. They taste like black licorice and smell like burned rubber! Truely awful!

Yumm I love black licorice and well burned rubber….. it smells like (pause) victory.

Only if the rubber is well done.

Obviously, I’ve never tried a fish from there…James, what’s the cause of that…do you think?

I’ve had fish from the Prescott area..(although it’s been a while) without any petro smells…

Must be a combination of the power plant, feed lots and my desire to get people to release fish that are perfectly good to eat so I can catch them and do the same.

Pool 2 eyes are delicious. I dont know what happens between here and there.

Do you feel that eating eyes 15-17″ long have been alive long enough to contain large amounts of cotamination?

Yea Dave. Heard they taste something like balde eagles amd loons.

I’ve posted a few times lately about trying to find some fish to eat. What equals a meal of fish for this house is about 2 18″ eyes. That will feed the 5 of us. Where are not big fish eaters but do like them once and awhile. I have pretty much given up on keeping fishg in the freezer. They just seem to get lost in there. Also with no kept fish in the house it means I need to go fishing if I want some.

If you check the MN DRN advisory consumption info you’ll find that they suggest no more than 1 meal a week of walleye be eaten. To me, that’s just a truck load of fish.

There’s no reason these fish can’t be safely consumed.

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Do you feel that eating eyes 15-17″ long have been alive long enough to contain large amounts of cotamination?

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my desire to get people to release fish that are perfectly good to eat

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My sister in law wanted some fish a couple months ago. I aske walley or sunnies? She said sunnies because she didn’t want to eat the fish out of the St Croix. After a few seconds of thought..I agreed, you never know what’s in those moving waters…

Well, actually, the fish in the St. Croix, according to the last MN DNR consumption advisories I read, are much more hazardous to eat than fish from the Mississippi River. This was 2 or 3 years ago I last checked and compared. The suggestion was for no more than 1 meal /month due to mercury contamination if I remember correctly. Not that a 16″ saug out of the Croix is going to hurt a guy.

You might want to check this out to see if this is still true.

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Pool 2 eyes are delicious. I dont know what happens between here and there.

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Gator Hunter

According to the MN fish advisory. They are the same for walleye in P4 to the Kellogge dam and the St Croix. One meal a week…Until you get to the 25″ and up…one meal a month.

I guess my point is that a river will clean it self (to some extent) where in a lake any contaminate would just sit there on the bottom…until it gets stirred up again. I believe that rivers are safer than lakes. The only thing wrong with my thought is that people tend to think that they can dump anything into a river…because it will “just go away”.
Someone had a signature file that went something like “we all live down stream”. How true that is!

I don’t know if I’d say a river is safer than a lake. There are so many areas of little or no current that act just like lakes until high water kicks all the sediment around.

The silt around the Bay City flats is so conaminated that the launch in B.C. cannot be dredged anylonger for fear of stirring up the pollutants.

Gator Hunter

Not to go aginst what anyone said I think 1 meal(of fish) a week is enough, but I just wanted to point out I read some research that was done on mayflies that said they could not survive in polluted water. With the mayfly hatch we saw this year the river must be in pretty good shape. As for us about one meal a month is sufficient.

The presence and proliferation of mayflies is indeed an excellent barometer of the health of our fishery.

Very good point Redneck JR.

The mississippi river appears to me to be and incredibly diverse ecosystem.
With its many different back bays, side channels, sloughs and the main channel itself, it would seem possible that parts of it could be incredibly polluted, and others, perhaps, hardly polluted at all.
Basing the health of the system on the mass of the mayfly hatch seems to be a bit of a stretch. Its just to diverse and large in total acreage.
I am by no means a scientist. Far from it.
To me though, many more factors would have to be weighed in and considered than just a large mayfly hatch.
I’ve also heard the same things about frogs and polution.
In many cases, reptiles are the first to show the effects of pollutants in a system.
Just wondering out loud mostly here.
JWB

Dr. Calvin Fremling WSU professor is noted as the top expert of the Upper Mississipi River. His studies over many years show that the May Fly hatch is a great, I repeat, great indicator on the health of the river!

I won’t argue with the professor.
Like I said before, I’m no scietist!
JWB