Creating a Lake

[patrick_g]

Bird, My one aunt (mom's sister) always cooked the heads and when I shot squirrels with my cousins at their house we ate the brains (just what is a prion anyway???) My mom never cooked the heads.

If BBQed properly, you can eat just about anything, even things that would otherwise be met with revulsion. Alligator for example is quite bland just straight fried but lightly breaded with Cajun spices and with a dipping sauce it is very tasty. Possum is just way too greasy for my preference and as long as I can buy meat at the market I won't be eating possum. I'm not really fond of coon but I'd rather eat coon than possum by a good margin.

When I was in grade school brains and eggs scrambled together was a once in a while special breakfast treat. These were beef brains.

What is a prion?

Prion is short for proteinaceous infectious particle and is an infectious agent composed only of protein. They cause a number of diseases in a variety of animals, including BSE in cattle and CJD in humans. All known prion diseases affect the structure of the brain or other neural tissue, and all are currently untreatable and fatal. The bad news is that it is often many years after contact before symptoms appear and the only known cure is DEATH! I don't eat brains anymore.

As for squid and octopus... I have had squid a few ways that was quite nice. One way I like is a large thick steak cut from the side of a large squid. Fishing bait sized squid can be cut up like okra and sauteed lightly. I have had them at a walk up window at an Italian place where they lightly bread them and deep fry them and serve with French fries (squid boat) and those were good. The tentacles are crunchy and really good. All of the above squid dishes are Italian. The oriental squid dishes don't do too much for me except the way a Korean neighbor does them with lots of hot peppers and friend rice, yum yum.

I'm sure there must be some ways to fix octopus where I would like it but I never encountered any at a Chinese buffet. I got an octopus recipe from a Japanese American via ham radio once after I caught an octopus from my boat when vacationing out in the Channel Islands off the California coast. The first instruction was to hold the octopus by the arms and bash its head several times on the sidewalk to tenderize it. Shorty afterward I released the unharmed octopus. I didn't feel like smashing the thing on my sailboat deck and we were many miles from any sidewalk.

Abalone is another thing that can be really nice if done properly and be like eating a large chunk of rubber if not done right. If you slice it in 1/2 inch thick steaks and pound the devil out of it then it will be tender but if you don't pound it you will wish you did. I haven't had abalone in decades. Over 20 years ago it was $25 a pound live at a San Diego fish market. Of course I always procured mine fresh (and free.)

Pat

 

[Bird]

Yep, Pat, I used to be rather fond of scrambled eggs and calf brains (and we used the hog brains the same way when we butchered hogs). But it's been many years now since I had any because my wife has always said, "No way!" But for the same reason you mentioned, I probably won't have any more myself. I haven't even noticed whether they still have the calf brains in the grocery store or not.

Dallas used to have one 24 hour restaurant that had scrambled eggs and calf brains on the menu, but I sure wouldn't know of any that have such on the menu any more.

And yes, I've eaten alligator, both in Louisiana and in Dallas; not bad; not particularly good.

 

[EddieWalker]

I think we made a mistake. Maybe a pretty big one.

Steph and the kids have been fishing in our small pond just about every weekend. They are catching bluegill that might go half a pound, and the channel cats are from 1 to 3 pounds. Then we put them into a bucket and take them down to the lake on our four wheeler, and let them go.

Last weekend, and again today, Steph cought what we thought was a baby channel cat. As you can see in the picture, it's much smaller then the bigger ones, so we made an assumption. I know that the channel cats are supposed to be 3 years old to spawn, but since we are catching those small ones, we just concluded that we were wrong on the age for spawning.

I posted this same picture on Pondboss and got a reply that it's a bullhead. I did a search over there and everything seems to point that bullheads are bad. I haven't found out why they are bad, or what they do that's bad, just that it's not something that I want in my ponds.

We now have two of them in Lake Marabou. Odds are good that they will do well and get bigger. It's 50/50 that I have a male and a female, so maybe we'll get lucky. Of course, the same way they got into the small pond, is probably going to happen in Lake Marabou and there's nothing that I can do about it.

Any thoughts or knowledge to share?

Eddie

 

[BTDT]

Maybe they think they're bad because they will be eating the food that could be going to feed your other fish. Kind of like putting out corn for deer, and goats showing up to eat it?

 

[bindian]

I think we made a mistake. Maybe a pretty big one.

Steph and the kids have been fishing in our small pond just about every weekend. They are catching bluegill that might go half a pound, and the channel cats are from 1 to 3 pounds. Then we put them into a bucket and take them down to the lake on our four wheeler, and let them go.

Last weekend, and again today, Steph cought what we thought was a baby channel cat. As you can see in the picture, it's much smaller then the bigger ones, so we made an assumption. I know that the channel cats are supposed to be 3 years old to spawn, but since we are catching those small ones, we just concluded that we were wrong on the age for spawning.

I posted this same picture on Pondboss and got a reply that it's a bullhead. I did a search over there and everything seems to point that bullheads are bad. I haven't found out why they are bad, or what they do that's bad, just that it's not something that I want in my ponds.

We now have two of them in Lake Marabou. Odds are good that they will do well and get bigger. It's 50/50 that I have a male and a female, so maybe we'll get lucky. Of course, the same way they got into the small pond, is probably going to happen in Lake Marabou and there's nothing that I can do about it.

Any thoughts or knowledge to share?

Eddie

Eddie,
According to this link for Brown Bullhead catfish, they are what I was raised to call a Mud catfish. Catfish The ones we always caught in my ex's parents 65 acre lake were good eating , but became so numerous, they had stunted growth and were usually under a pound. We always caught them and never any blues or channel cats. Which led us to believe that the Mud cats overtook the blue and channel cats. They seemed to be everywhere in the lake. I really don't think you want them in Lake Marabou
My Dad had a duck pond that would dry up without rain. We would find small perch in it. Dad explained birds can pick up eggs in their feathers and transfer them to new water when they clean their selves.
Good luck with your Mud cats.
hugs, Brandi

 

[have_blue]

I think we made a mistake. Maybe a pretty big one...
Any thoughts or knowledge to share? Eddie

Eddie, The best medicine for BH is lots of medium to large bass and channel cats. You will probably have a small breeding population of BH regardless, but if you have plenty of predators, they won't dominate.

If it's any consolation, BH can weigh up to a pound, and are quite tasty.

 

[patrick_g]

Eddie, A good policy is to ABSOLUTELY forbid the use of minnows in your pond as bait. Adding minnows from a reliable source is good. Quite often minnows for sale commercially as bait or personally seined contain young of other species. The typical person when through fishing with no use for the rest of the minnows dumps them in the water. Now you have carp and who knows what all "trash" or undesirable fish in your pond.

As far as the rural legend of birds carrying baby fish under their wings to "seed" more food sources or birds carrying fish eggs on their feathers or feet...

Lets just say that you can't find an ichthyologist or a wildlife professional that makes that claim. The most agreement with that "theory" I have ever found (and I researched it quite a bit) was that some biologists think that it is not entirely impossible that at some time given all the millions and millions of opportunities some bird may have accidentally transported a fish egg between ponds but that no evidence has ever been found to support it.

Lots of ducks and geese have been shot by lots of sportsmen who are also fishermen and would notice baby fish on a duck or goose and would probably notice clinging fish eggs if they were there. Not that no one wouldn't ever miss an egg but if it were common someone would have noticed it and surely reported it.

Gee buddy, I wonder why there are frequently little baby fish out in the field where we drop a duck or goose???
Ever hear about it from a sober reliable source? (No, that doesn't exclude ALL fishermen!)

A lot of unexplained pond stocking is from overflow events and trespassing fishermen.

My mom was fishing one of a friend's two ponds we helped him build when we lived in Ohio. He drove up and said she would never catch anything in that pond since he hadn't stocked it so she held up her stringer full of BIG FAT bluegill. He wondered how the fish got into that pond.

Seems he had given instructions to not return undersized bluegill to his stocked pond as they were overpopulating it, saying to just toss them up on the bank. My mom tossed them into the unstocked pond instead and subsequently was able to fish out some nice ones.

No birds were harmed (or slighted) in the retelling of this story.

Pat

 

[Bird]

I'd never heard of anyone thinking birds carried baby fish from one pond to another, but I long ago heard the theory that fish eggs stick to the legs of wading birds and are transferred to other bodies of water in that manner. Naturally, I have no idea what the truth is or how fish manage to show up in small ponds that have never been stocked. When I was a kid in Healdton, OK, we had a small "pond" that wouldn't hold water. The Winter and Spring rains would usually fill it about waist deep and in the heat of the Summer, it would go dry every year. But when it dried up, there was always quite a number of one to two inch fish in there. I always wondered how they got there, with the fish eggs on birds' legs being the only plausible theory I ever heard.

 

[patrick_g]

I always wondered how they got there, with the fish eggs on birds' legs being the only plausible theory I ever heard.

Sounds reasonable but we just can't be sure.

The baby fish thing is widely held in Oklahoma rural folklore now. My PhD biologist buddy never tires laughing at it. He is a very practical guy and can only say maybe to the eggs.

I had a small pond (low place behind another pond's dam that went dry every summer so it could be driven over easily, no mud except for a couple deeper puddles. I assumed (you know what that can do) that the little puddles froze solid every winter so there coudn't possibly be dish in them.

When I excavated the thing to make a year round pond the last thing done with the track hoe was break open the sides of those puddles and low and behold out swam a few hundred perch!

Pat

 

[EddieWalker]

Very interesting. My small pond, where the bullhead were cought is almost at the high spot of my land. There is barely enjoy watershed to fill it, but I've had to move hundreds of yards of dirt to divert all the water that it gets. There is nothing above it that could supply it with fish or eggs.

I've heard the bird theory and have always wondered about it. I never gave the ducks and geese any thought, but considered shore bird, egrets and herons as the source of eggs. Nobody is shooting them,so it's very unlikely that anybody would notice what happens to be cought in there legs. Of couse, I don't have any idea how a fish egg would get attached to a herons leg and stay there, but that doesn't mean it's not possible.

The other theory that I've heard and have my doubts about, but don't totally discount is that some birds may eat the eggs, or a fish with eggs in it and they survive the digestive track. Then when the bird poops, the egg enters the pond and the fish survives. It seems kind of far fetched, but maybe?

We've never used minnows for bait, but until reading your warning, we very well might have done so in the future. I'm gonna make it a rule that live bait is not allowed. Hot dogs work great, so there's no reason for it anyway.

It's a total mystery where they came from. Just guessing from the size of the two she's cought, they are both the same size, and we're guessing less then half a year old, maybe only three months.

From what I'm reading here, and from what I've found on my searches on Pondboss, the problem with bullhead is how aggressively they breed, spawn and take over a body of water. They seem perticularly bad in the New England states because of how many trout eggs they eat. Trout are the prefered fish, so nobody wants bullheads competeing with the trout.

I'm curious about how these things will taste, and how they will be to catch. It looks like I have another species of fish in my small pond and that's that. It also looks like I've let them loose in Lake Marabou, and I need to get some bass in there pretty soon to keep the bullhead under control!!!!!

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[Bird]

I agree with have blue; the solution to the problem (if you consider it a problem) is to eat those bullheads - or any other catfish I catch from clean fresh water.

Along the coast, there's a salt water catfish called "hardheads". Now they're quite normal looking catfish, but everyone considers them to be trash and not fit to eat. Many years ago, curiosity got the best of me (as usual) so I dressed out 3 of them and Margaret fried them. One bite and I threw it all in the trash.

Otherwise, I've only once in my life found a catfish I didn't like to eat. When we spent the school year of 1971-72 in Des Plaines, IL, the local supermarket had a very nice selection of fresh fish except . . . no catfish. And then one day I went in there and they had 3 whole catfish, skinned, gutted, and the heads removed, of course, then they had a whole pile of catfish fillets. I took the 3 whole ones plus a pound of two of the fillets. When Margaret fried them, the whole ones were good; the fillets were so bad we threw them all away and I have no idea just what kind of catfish they were.

I don't know how many of you eat fish eggs, but I found many years ago that I really don't care for caviar. However, when cleaning fish such as crappie and flounder, if they have eggs in them and you can take them out without breaking the egg sack and fry them along with the fish, they're quite tasty (if you break the egg sack, they tend to pop and splatter grease when you fry them). So about 30 years ago, I caught a bullhead fishing at Toledo Bend and it was full of eggs. Of course, I filleted the fish and we ate the fillets, but we also fried that sack of eggs. The flavor would have been OK, but those eggs were like chewing rubber; just couldn't chew them up. But our German Shepherd sure enjoyed them.

 

[patrick_g]

Bird, My parents always ate the egg sacks of fresh water fish they caught. We also ate the fins of the smaller fish, not catfish though. They were almost like potato chips.

One of the best tasting fish I ever had (I'm not all that into fish, mind you and I like fish that doesn't taste fishy) was an ocean fish, cabazon which a commercial fisherman told me it is a relative of the ling cod and a bottom dweller/rockfish.

It is a weird looking big mouthed critter with eye brows that look like kelp fronds and has skin like a catfish instead of scales. Its tongue is greenish blue, its flesh is blue but cooks up snow white. Now for the OOPS.

Its eggs are poisonous. I know of no fresh water species with any poisonous parts that you can eat by mistake.

If you want to get into rural myths or maybe close held information... some folks say that some of the catfish have poisonous barbels (whisker like organs, especially on catfish.) Like non-poisonous snake bites are still serious as they don't brush their teeth and can give you a nasty infection, I doubt catfish barbels are all that sanitary but I don't know about the poison beliefs.

Pat

 

[Farwell]

Pat,
You are the only person that I know of that has mentioned eating the fins of small fish and them being like potato chips. I have told many people about how my Mother fried pan fish in corn meal and we ate the fins and tail but none of them had ever heard of the practice.

 

[Bird]

Pat (and Farwell), of course we ate the fins and tails of smaller fish. I was grown before I ever heard of "filleting" fish. We "scaled" the fish, gutted them, and cut off the heads. The only ones we skinned were aligator gar and that's more like a shell than skin and scales. With catfish, they were held with pliers; one jaw in the mouth, the other jaw on top of the head. They were killed with a knife point into the brain, then dipped into hot water and wiped thoroughly with a towel before being gutted and having the head cut off. The only fish that weren't fried whole were the ones that were too big and then they were simply split; no bones removed. And Pat, I guess you could say that I am into fish. I like just about all kinds of fresh water and salt water seafoods, and it would suit me just fine to have fish 3 or 4 days a week. I don't recall ever hearing the name "cabazon", but when my parents lived in Alaska, they liked the ling cod and also told of catching some kind of cod with green meat that cooked up white. Mother said the first time she saw any of it, she wasn't sure it would be fit to eat. I was fortunate enough to catch a few ling cod the last time I was in Alaska, but none of the green cod. And we sure did catch a lot of black, red, and china rockfish, which were also excellent eating.

 

[have_blue]

Never heard the theory about birds intentionally seeding ponds. But I can tell you what I've seen with my own eyes.

I was walking toward a a green heron, and surprised him while he was cleaning his beak on a stick. He flew away, and I was curious to see what I might find on the stick. It was live baby gambusia (mosquito fish), still wiggling on the stick. I assumed the bird caught a pregnant gambusia, and popped her belly while eating her. The heron could easily have cleaned his beak at a nearby pond, and transferred the fish.

On many occasions I have seen birds attacking other birds, trying to steal their food or just drive them out of their territory. When a bird is attacked, it will drop whatever it's carrying so it can escape faster. I have seen birds drop an acorn, a pecan, a fish, and a frog. The fish and frog were dead, but could just as well have been alive.

I pushed a 1' tree over with a dozer last spring. The dirt was soft, and it left a 7-8' wide stump hole about 18" deep. I was bush hoging 3-4 months later, and saw water in that hole and noticed movement. I hopped off the tractor for a closer look, and the stump hole had 2 dozen gambusia minnows swimming happily in it. The stump hole is 400-500' from the nearest ditch, and no high water can get to it.

Those are just 3 examples of how nature finds a way to spread her creatures. I'm sure there are many more ways.

 

[EddieWalker]

From what I've read and the replies you guys gave me, I don't really think the bullheads are all that bad. They seem to get there reputation from trout ponds more then down south. It might be the bass and other large predator fish that we have in our ponds, I'm not sure. I realise it's something I can't undo, so I'm gonna consider it a positive. They will breed like crazy and provide tons of protein for my bass and channel cats!!! Once my bass get up to size, they will have all the food they could possibly eat!!!

Steph cought 11 more nice sized channel cats in our small pond yesterday. Then she took them down to Lake Marabou and let them go. She bought plastic storage box with a lid that locks down to keep the fish and water in there while driving the ATV down to the lake. It's small enough that she can pic it up by herself and let them go at the waters edge. The fish are so big, that she will take them down there when she has two, but sometimes she'll worry about one if it's been in there for awhile and take it down there before it dies. We have a little minnow pump that oxyginates the water, so that should help them out too.

These pics were taken yesterday.

Eddie

 

[patrick_g]

There are verified reports of tornadoes picking up water with fish and dumping them elsewhere.

There are reports of the sky raining frogs and fish (separate events) and it was suspected that tornadoes were the cause although at the time there was no surveillance to detect the storm that could have initially picked them up.

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | How can it rain fish?

The above is one of many Google hits.

# In 1873, Scientific American reported that Kansas City, Missouri was blanketed with frogs that dropped from the sky during a storm.
# Minneapolis, Minnesota was pelted with frogs and toads in July, 1901. A news item stated: "When the storm was at its highest... there appeared as if descending directly from the sky a huge green mass. Then followed a peculiar patter, unlike that of rain or hail. When the storm abated the people found, three inches deep and covering an area of more than four blocks, a collection of a most striking variety of frogs... so thick in some places that...

The above is from: Weird, Weird Rain

While picking blackberries with a cousin this year I noticed a cow's hoof print filled with water had something in it splashing. She suggested it might be a tadpole which I agreed was a good guess. I stuck my finger in and wiggled iit and out splashed a 1 inch long fish. Then we noticed a hundred or so dead fish in the 3/4 to 1 1/2 inch range scattered in the grass. I then noticed dead grass and other "floatable" debris on the lowest strand of a nearby barbed wire fence. An overflow event had washed some fry from a nearby pond.

As far as eating the fins and tails... if the fish is small enough the fins and tails fry up really crisp and are quite potato chip like. If your parents cook and eat fish this way then you don't have a clue it might be considered strange by others as it is just "THE WAY" you are used to seeing it done.

When we lived in NW Ohio we used to get a small fish called smelt. These were pretty much fried whole and eaten fins, skeleton and all.

Bird, Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-seafood and have caught or collected and eaten a variety of critters including (but not limited to) sea cucumbers, abalone, muscles, scallops, lobster, crawdads, turtle, snake, squid, octopus, and fish that I don't know what they were except dumb enough to let me swim up to them with a spear gun.

I don't like fish that taste too fishy and I'm not so into fish that I eat the left over pan fish cold for breakfast the next day (like my grandmother loved to do.) I did not select fish from the breakfast buffet while in London.

I have even eaten anchovies, sardines, kippered herring and such but not in years.

As a young child I did not like the texture of cornmeal on my fried fish and so my mom would flour mine. I like it fine now though. That preference created quite a stir among the pre MLK domestic help at a family fish fry in Mississippi where we seined a pond and had the fish deep fried in three legged cast iron pots over wood fires. Apparently the food quirks of "THAT NORTHERN BOY" were quite a gossip topic that night. Rest assured a couple floured fish in with 20-30 dredged in corn meal come out with significant meal adhered. I survived the incident.

Pat

 

[3RRL]

Pat,
Tornadoes are not the only thing that displace water animals.
About 20 years ago (perhaps when you were still in California?) there was a huge fire here in the Inland Empire. I don't recall all the details, but apparently they scooped up water from the Ocean and lakes with aircraft and dumped it on the fire. There was a diver, still in his wetsuit and SCUBA tanks found in the hills burnt to a crisp. You may have heard about it back then? Can you imagine THAT happening to you?

 

[Spiveyman]

Similar story to validate the bird theorists... I was fishing in my papaw's pond, saw some kind of king fisher?? (I'm not a bird guy, so I have no idea what it actually was), he caught a little blue gill then flew over to the edge of the water trough (this pond feeds a trough for cattle). He was messing around with the fish and lost it right into the trough. He flew off so I went over there and sure enough there was a little blue gill swimming around in the cattle trough. That could just as easily have been the next pond over where he dropped it.

I also grew up scaling fish (before it was cool to filet), we'd fry them up and my papaw would always ask for everyone's tails and fins. He loved them. He gets mad now because my dad and uncle always filet the fish and he doesn't get those "fin chips." We also save the egg sacks from the bass and fry them up.

Good luck with the cats, when the bass start tearing them up you are going to have a great time catching some trophy bass!

 

[patrick_g]

but apparently they scooped up water from the Ocean and lakes with aircraft and dumped it on the fire. There was a diver, still in his wetsuit and SCUBA tanks found in the hills burnt to a crisp.

3RRL, Urban Legends Reference Pages is an excellent place to "test" these stories prior to repeating them. This story was even the subject of a "Myth Busters" episode.

Sorry, sounds neat, just didn't happen.

Pat