# eating fresh water drum



## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

I know some look down on them and that they are called sheepshead , but I wanted to try for myself.

so last week I had Friday off and went fishing , my son caught a nice big Drum at the mouth of the River and lake Michigan filleted it up , my dad had some rainbow trout he had caught a few days earlier for me and we had fish fry on Sunday.

to make a blind taste of it I cut up the 2017 trout , my dad gave me some 2018 trout that had only been frozen a few days and the drum and beer battered it all.

had the wife try a bite of each not knowing what was what 

she liked drum the best , said it was just about like catfish.

one thing I did do is soak the drum in milk for 30 minutes before breading and frying 

I learned that there is an organic compound present in all fish that is clear and odorless , until it oxidizes and that is the fish smell we think of , soaking 30 minutes in milk the milk bods to the oxidized compound an is carried away.

the next day I did the rest of the 2017 trout the same way with a milk soak , it had gotten a bit old in the freezer but that made it better.

so milk soak works and drum is good eating.


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## JJ Grandits (Nov 10, 2002)

Around here Sheepheap, Carp and Suckers are considered garbage fish. At work I once suggested smoking some Carp and people looked at me like I suggested eating out of a diaper pail.
I understand they are pretty good but have never tried them. I know that Carp are one of the most popular food fishes in the world.
It is hotter then hell up here (at least for us it is) and I am spending the day at my one landscape customers house rotating sprinklers through the beds.
While they are going I'm going to kick back and fish his pond to remove the explosion of Carp that are in it. They came in a few years back with the overflow from the creek one spring and have been breeding like crazy. I've caught a few but never dedicated a day to it. I'll have to look up some recipes if I get the chance. The milk thing sounds good. Never cared for the fishy taste.


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## brownegg (Jan 5, 2006)

Carp is awesome when brined and smoked properly....those big bones are so easy to pull from the fish chunks after it's smoked...good as ham in my book. Some folks bake carp and stuff it with things of their liking....I prefer to have it smoked.

be


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## big rockpile (Feb 24, 2003)

Here Suckers are the Best fish there is. Carp make sure you get the Mud Vein out Drum ??? Truth I can't remember but have a Small one I caught the other day.

big rockpile


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## ed/La (Feb 26, 2009)

With all the good fish around why eat fresh water drum? When I fished commercially no market would buy them. Crab bait, chum or maybe cat food. I throw them back.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

the limit on any game fish is 5 here in WIS hard to stock a freezer when 10 is the max limit for a species, the drum are coming out of cold water same as the others.

they have a bad name but they eat fine I will have to see how they freeze they fight hard like a game fish

there are other fish like Fresh water Burbot that have little to no commercial value either because they don't freeze well but eaten fresh they are the finest table fare around. they are given ugly names like Eelpout and Lawyers I sometimes wonder if it is to hide the secret of their deliciousness.

also our waters don't produce fish like LA and many bodies of water get heavy fishing pressure particularly on game species often the daily limit on a lake for walley or small mouth bass is reduced to 2 .


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## ridgerunner1965 (Apr 13, 2013)

I see you are in Wisconsin,i lived and fished there until I was about 9 yrs old. I now live in Missouri.

me and my gpa fished a lot in Wisconsin,if I remember correctly a sheepshead is a different fish from what drum we have here in Missouri. my and my gpa never kept them when we fished in Wisconsin. I never really knew why tho as I was just a kid.

now I fish mostly here in Missouri and Oklahoma. we have white drum here and I love eating them.most people either throw them back or kill them.

I usually don't keep them unless they are at least 3 lbs. the smaller ones don't have a lot of meat on them.

the key I found to mking them tasty is simply to throw them on ice as soon as you unhook them. if you put them on stringer or in a fish basket they die immediately and start to decay.

as soon as I get home I clean them and get them in the frige.

I cook them the same as catfish,rolled in seasoned cornmeal after a egg/milk bath. catfish has a finely fibered meat where drum have larger flakes,thats about the only way you can tell them apart after cooking.

the drum we have here are delicious.


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

Growing up in central Michigan, suckers were garbage. No one ate suckers.
When I lived near Lake Superior, suckers would spawn upstream, in great quantity. Growing in the cold, crystal clear waters of the Big Lake, they were quite good. Getting the bones out was a bit of trouble. But we would clean them, cut into chunks, put in pint canning jars, a touch of vinegar and salt and can them. The bones dissolved, like canned salmon.


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## big rockpile (Feb 24, 2003)

haypoint said:


> Growing up in central Michigan, suckers were garbage. No one ate suckers.
> When I lived near Lake Superior, suckers would spawn upstream, in great quantity. Growing in the cold, crystal clear waters of the Big Lake, they were quite good. Getting the bones out was a bit of trouble. But we would clean them, cut into chunks, put in pint canning jars, a touch of vinegar and salt and can them. The bones dissolved, like canned salmon.


Oh couldn't ever do this to Suckers. We take and Scale them, fillet them, then Score the meat about 1/8- 1/4 inch down to the Skin, bread with Cornmeal, Salt and Pepper making sure to get down into each cut, Deep Fry. Done right Flaky White Meat, sweet and don't have to worry much about bones.

big rockpile


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

as far as I know there is only one fresh water drum in north america https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshwater_drum

but they take on different coloring based on the water they are in and people call them many different things.

drum have no Y bone so easy to fillet and boneless

as for carp I have heard canned it comes out like canned tuna also have heard that grinding the carp meat and making carp balls is a great way to serve them apparently the Y bones are a non issue after going through the meat grinder but I have not tried either.


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## JJ Grandits (Nov 10, 2002)

Once I get my courage up I have to try it.
I only eat fish that I have caught out of cold water and 99.9%+ are catch and release. This is mostly due to the amount of time I have to fish. a little here, a little there, not the kind of scenerio where you want to be hauling a dead fish around with you all day.
" No Dr., I do not have a venereal disease, on the way here I stopped to go fishing."


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## shawnlee (Apr 13, 2010)

Fresh water drum....good eating....nothing special like a cod/halibut or crappie, but just fine for eating...good filet and no bones, plenty of meat.










Common carp, not the best tasting fish in the world, but we used to go to a fish stand in Grafton Ill that had great carp sandwiches.....filet and cross cut, then deep fried to turn the Y bones to mush in the heat.....pretty tasty with plenty of tartar sauce on bread with












River gar......when ground into hush puppie sized balls and seasoned they are edible.....nothing you would want to eat once a week, but a couple times in the summer is fine, lends itself well to crazy recipies with lots of seasoning....heavy garlic or heavy peppers or onions....anything to cover the fish taste, hot sauce etc.











Even the invasive Asian carp are decent when prepared correctly...….

But as far as drum are concerned, they are good eatin……..I would say they taste close to a bluegill, not much difference.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

have you heard the new name for Asian carp , the restraint association or something like that requested the name silver fin they figured out how to cut and cook them and sell them to people in a restaurant , since there seems to be an unending supply of them and they have little other value they can buy cheap sell for regular price and make a good profit.


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## shawnlee (Apr 13, 2010)

Yes....people are making almost 1000 bucks a day netting them for resale in some parts.....there is actually a few different species of them, silver fin is the jumper I think.


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## GREENCOUNTYPETE (Jul 25, 2006)

a lot of people throughout the years must have liked carp , they drug them across the ocean and then across the country populating nearly every body of water as they went.

there is the old carp camp just south of Madison Wisconsin where the Yahara River opens into Lake Kegonsa about 75 yards wide the river was set with nets and there was a processing shed and net shed and into the 1940s carp were caught by the ton


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