Buffalo not Bisons

[butchd]

J have eaten fish for years. Trout have never impressed me nor Salmon. The best taste to me is Buffalo, ribs or boney. I thought Arkansas and Louisiana had a monopoly on the critters. Last night there was a program on some guys netting in Lake Wisconsin. They are avaivable down here only from private parties. How do you guys get them? I fear that they might be grinding them into animal feed.

 

[Alpo]

We gots this feller around here that was growin' some. One got out and had an altercation with a semi. He lost.

Friend of mine seen it happen. Called the owner. After the owner got through cussin', Tim asked, "Whatcha gonna do wif it?"

Owner said, "Leave it for the buzzards and claim the insurance."

Tim says, "Can I have some of it?"

Like I say, this was fresh kill. Still bleeding when he called the owner.

I don't know how much he took, but he made biltong. That's South African jerky. Peppered strips of backstrap and hung it in his kitchen to air-dry.

He gave me about three pounds of it. It was GOOOOOOOOD.

Only buffalo I ever et.

Got Bison beat all to hell.

 

[Fishslayer]

I do enjoy salmon but never got the whole "trout" thing. They usually taste kind of muddy to me.

Of course, I grew up on Grandma's fried bass, bluegill (highly underrated eatin' fish IMO) drum & catfish. Then I started catchin' my own saltwater feesh...

Grandma made Buffalo carp paddies once & they were pretty good.

 

[THE PILGRIM]

Bison is pretty good eating. Ostrich, well I have tried if but it's not something I go looking for. Emu? They look a lot like ostrich. Probably taste pretty much the same.

 

[bobelk99]

In these parts we happily eat Bison hot off the grill, but never the gray leftovers.

We feed buffalo to the cats. At least those which will eat it. Really only fit for fertilizer.

 

[gdnagle]

OK had to look that one up never heard of Buffalo fish before. Sucker fish family reminds me old a carp.

 

[Alpo]

Thank you gdnagle. Now the first post makes sense. I've eaten fish too, and buffalo is MUCH better. But then, so is cow, pig and chicken. Just about any critter is better'n fish.

I had never heard of a buffalo fish, and thought he was talkin' about them big southeast Asian cows.

Don't I feel dumb.

 

[butchd]

The buffalo fish resembles a carp but the mouth differs. I'm not surprised some have not heard of a buffalo since I've never seen them on nat'l fishing or cooking shows until last night. They are bony like a Pike in the filets but the taste is worth the effort to pull them out. Some people save only the ribs and some cut the filets into serrations and fry well until the bones can be eaten with the fried meat. The show last night was set on Wisconsin Lake. I'll bet that it wasn't in Mississippi thus, I wanted to know what Northeners felt about what I think is a valuable asset.

 

[shouldazagged]

As a kid I ate a lot of carp. If they come from clean water and are properly dressed out they can be delicious. But the only buffalo (fish) I ever ate was given to me by a neighbor who caught it where the Salt River empties into the Ohio. It tasted very strongly of diesel fuel and was inedible. That was many years ago and the rivers are cleaner now, but I've never much wanted to try buffalo again.

 

[kwselke]

I went to a fish fry in central Texas and there were about 100 people there. I was scarfing down chunks of fried fish, french fries, and gobs of homemade coleslaw. Somebody nudged me and said that fish is buffalo. I said it tastes great!

I've never eaten Ostrich, but during the great Emu bust of the 1990s, I did shoot a feral Emu. It had the texture and flavor of low quality beef round steak.

The wild game taste that surprised me was alligator. I think it tastes like fresh fish. Now lets name things that are not chickens that taste like chicken.

 

[semperfi71]

My Father, in the 1950s and 1960s used to catch buffalo (the fish) in the rivers that fed into the Texas Gulf waters. Besides "telephoning" (shock treatment) they used gill nets. Bait and hook did not seem to work.

I never ate any. I too care not for trout, salmon, and such fishies. Born in Texas good fish is fried fish, Walleye being the best (not a native to Texas).

 

[Texas Star]

I'm a Texan, and I DO like trout and salmon! Probably those who don't like trout have only ordered in restaurants, where they got farm-raised fish, or caught them soon after a hatchery stocked some.

The diet of fresh trout in wild waters is different from hatchery fish and the flesh usually looks more pink than white. This is logical, as salmon is also pink or red and trout and char are closely related to salmon. The Brook "Trout" is really a char.

I always buy Joseph R. Tomelleri's "Trout of North America" calendar. The artist paints those fish so they look almost as real as photos. His work is astounding. He also illustrated, "Trout and Salmon of North Ameica" by Robert Behnke. A splendid work!

I've never eaten buffalo or carp. I thought they were consumed by poverty-stricken people who took them on a subsistence basis.

Theroretically, we have some trout in Texas. I think they're all rainbows, stocked in a few waters cold enough, and just from hatcheries. I'm not sure if there's any natural reproduction. My fishing for salmonids was in Colorado and in Newfoundland. But a friend brought back fresh sockeye salmon from Alaska. It was terrific. BTW, I normally broil fish, not fry them.

Avoid salmon in restaurants and grocers unless they guarantee that it's wild caught. I'm sure that some cities like Seattle and Portland probably have fresh salmon. The hatchery (farm) raised salmon are known to contain carcinogens.

I like what Red Lobster sells as Red Rockfish. I'd read about them in novels set around Seattle and they're quite good. Wikipedia will show some in a Search, or Google them. Cod has gotten pretty expensive for a basic food fish . I avoid swordfish for its high mercury content and limit consumption of tuna for that reason. Albacore tuna secretes more mercury than other species.

 

[walter o]

From this post i would like to hear some thoughts on DRUM . The kind that swim , not the kind you beat on with sticks

 

[THE PILGRIM]

Am surprised to hear how many of you Southern boys haven't heard of Buffalo fish. Also carp, drum, shad. As a kid, My family only ate catfish, brim, crappie and bass. Have been a lot of places since then, including the Orient. No telling what I ate there!
Red Lobster? They use aggressive marketing practices. Ie - they make up new names for their menu items. Was down in Mexico, saw shrimp fishermen using feed scoops to load shrimp into the bed of a pickup. My response was- somebody is gonna have a shrimp special!

 

[butchd]

Walter: I've eaten baked Drum but it has been so long ago that I don't remember much about it. I caught Drum (also called Gasper Gool in AR) as a by product while fishing for Bass. I have heard their droneing vibration that seems to come from all over the world. I have heard people speak of the rocks that they had in their head. When I lived in Conway, AR one of the fish markets sold drum along side catfish and buffalo. Fish markets are a thing of the past. We can get Talapia, catfish, and Swizk (or something like that) at Wal~Mart but ain't but one guy I know that still sells fish. Mainly because of Mercury. I know back when Reagan was in office the public schools in Alexandria, LA served gar balls or at least posted them on the menus of the local paper.

 

[OFT II]

If you've ever eaten fish sticks you likely have ate buffalo, carp and drum.

 

[JSR III]

Tastes like chicken....

 

[DeadAye]

We catch Buffalo on The Tennessee River - At least below Pickwick Dam...
I'd be flat amazed if they weren't in the Mississippi, White, and St.Francis Rivers too.