Not five minutes after I finished writing a story about the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation’s 2022 proposal to encourage people to keep small bass for the table, my friend Tim Lee called to see if I wanted to go fishing.
To be honest, I didn’t really have the time, but his timing couldn’t have been better.
State fisheries biologists say people need to keep and eat more bass, and the new rule would limit them to keeping six bass, only one of which could be over 16 inches.
It so happens that Tim fishes a trophy bass pond and the rule there is that any bass caught that is 14 inches or less has to be kept and taken home. Usually, Tim ends up taking a dozen or two smaller bass home to his neighbors, who love to eat bass.
It was a perfect chance to put to practice what the biologists are proposing and, frankly, remind myself what a bass tastes like. The last time I ate a bass was probably 38 years ago when I was a college kid making Sunday night meals out of whatever I could catch or kill in the woods.
Part of that time gap is explained by 23 years living in Fairbanks, Alaska—hundreds of miles from the nearest bucket mouth. In Oklahoma, I’m usually fly-fishing more than fish catching for the table so that cuts back on my overall harvest.
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Why not eat a bass?
Like most Oklahoma anglers, I think, when I want a fish dinner I go out specifically to catch catfish, crappie, sand bass, or hybrid striped bass. I know that some diehard bass anglers simply will not eat largemouth bass. I’m not in that camp. I honestly just hadn’t given it much though.
The biologists say catch-and-release has gone a little overboard on many of our lakes and, from what I know of the few private trophy bass lakes and ponds I’ve been involved with that probably is true where small bass are concerned.
The healthy, round bass at the lake Tim fishes gobbled up a Gene Larew Biffle Bug, and a Rattlin’ Craw because I only had one bug of the right color. Two hit a Ned Rig Inch Worm lures for me. Colors with a lot of red, like Sooner Run and Black Neon. I pegged a ¼-ounce bullet on the bigger baits and used a 1/8th-ounce mushroom jig hook.
I just let ‘em sink on the cast and give them a slow steady retrieve just off the bottom to keep them out of the moss, or I bumped them off stumps and limbs or rocks where there was the cover.
I caught one of the 13 inchers with a Ned rig when the aging line on my spinning reel decided to create one of those nearly impossible twists 20 yards into the spool. A darned bass decided to swim off with the bait, which was sitting on the bottom of the lake and at the end of a lot of slack line.
We caught 20 or more on the day, most in the 12- to 14-inch range.
Catch some, lose some
A big one, and I mean big, hit Tim’s line up shallow and high-tailed it for the depths.
“Get your camera!” he yelled.
I picked it up and started the video just in time to catch sight of that bent rod and hear his heartfelt, “OH! Shit.”
His creature-bait combo failed him on the hook-set. Next time he’ll have extra-wide-gap hooks.
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The take-home six for the day included two 14-inchers that went 1.1 pounds each, two 13 inchers at .97 and .99 pounds, a 12 ½-incher at .90, and a 12 ¼-inch fish at .77 pounds. That’s six fish and a bag total of 5.83 pounds.
It was a handy take. The six bass fit nicely in a six-pack cooler with ice. It didn’t seem like much, but it yielded 1 pound 13 ounces of fillets, which is plenty for a meal for two.
To bleed or not to bleed
As is my habit with fish I plan to eat, I dispatched each and let them bleed out in the fish basket before putting them on ice. All except one, that is.
My theory is that bleeding out fish will make the fillets and cleaning process neater and yield milder tasting meat in the end.
The cleaning process was indeed nice and neat and those fillets were a nice white color. The one fish left to die on the ice was definitely bloody and its fillets were pink.
But flavor-wise, at least with largemouth bass, the bleeding didn’t seem to make a difference, at least not on a blind taste-test by my wife. I couldn’t tell the difference either.
I used a mild baked recipe: 12-15 minutes in a 400-degree oven, brushed with olive oil and lemon juice emulsion with a little garlic, and sprinkled with lemon pepper and fresh parsley.
Had I pushed the refrigerator time to 48 hours or put them in the freezer for a time, bloody verses clear, the blood may have made a flavor difference for that one set of fillets, but it’s hard to say for sure.
I still don’t plan on changing my habits. I like filleting fish that aren’t bloody.
In the end, we had a nice meal of baked fillets. They were juicy, firm, and very mild, not “fishy tasting” at all. And I will not hesitate at the chance to bring home largemouth bass (or spotted bass or smallmouth bass) for future dinners.
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