What are the tastiest freshwater fishes other than salmon/trout, Veeky Forums? And what are some good recipes for them?

agreed. everyone knows that salmon swim up-sea to spawn in the above sea level rock pools in which they were born.

>Crappie
That poor bastard really lost the species name lottery, didn't he?

I've been fishing for my whole life and I've dabbled in pescatarian. I feel sorry for the inland people who don't have access to fresh ocean fish.

But that said, there's plenty of delicious inland fish.
God tier:
>rainbow/brown trout
>grayling
>steelhead
>sockeye
>Arctic char

Really good tier:
>landlocked salmon
Atlantic or pacific salmon
>walleye
>crappie
>white bass / white striper hybrids
>landlocked stripers

>generally good tier (can be awesome if well prepared and properly cleaned)
>catfish
>white/yellow perch
>bluegill
>smallmouth bass

Better than a frozen pizza tier:
>largemouth bass
>walleye
>crappie

Whoops edit- delete walleye and crappie from better than frozen pizza

Pan fried master race reporting.

Elvers

oh shit i forgot about eel. eel is totally god tier.

If you can find them big enough, I like perch.
walleye is good

Zander is goat.

Speaking of eel (which is underrated), "sea" lampreys are pretty good. They have a similar life-cycle to salmon, so you'll find them in rivers.

They are nearly boneless, and can be prepared like squid/calamari. And they are under-fished because they are ugly (they inspired the visual design of the sandworms in 'Dune').

better known around my neck of the woods as White Perch.

white perch are different than crappie. but maybe your neck of the woods just calls some things by the wrong name

In my neck of the woods, the white perch is known as a silver bass and a crappie is a crappie.

walleye, northern pike, bass

Where my parents are from, near the Illinois/Iowa border, they call it Buffalo. I only made the mistake of ordering 'Buffalo' once

>inb4 flyover land

Sturgeon.

Ahem, I live in prime salmon country, and here, you fish for them when they are in FRESH water, asshole.

>lampreys
It's not as if these things won't try to latch onto you. I wouldn't want to fuck with those things either.

Crappies are pretty tasty, whatever people call them.

Other than frying them, you can steam them Chinese-style with sauces and scallions, and they turn very tender and flavorful.

Their modest size means that the steaming process gets to all of the meat.

Walleye, sunfish, perch

We love eating gar around here. We go spearing every weekend during the summer and get a bunch of them. Hard as nails to clean but you get the filets from them and bread and fry them like little balls and they're delicious

inb4 some faggot from California calls me a hillbilly

>We love eating gar around here.
It was never worth it to me to clean the boney fuckers.

Why would Californians call you a hillbilly? I live in NorCal and go fishing regularly. Salmon, trout, bass, and on occasion sturgeon (you need a group of people to pull in a sturgeon). Fishing is a very popular activity here, and big business along the northern coast.

Lampreys don't usually go after humans; they seek out cold-blooded fish that they can latch onto and suckle for days or weeks. Even if you're swimming around them, they'll tend to avoid you.

Also, they aren't that strong. If one bites you, you can just pull it off without much difficulty.

Freshwater largemouth bass over 12" taste like cardboard, idiot. They're fun to catch, but they are worse than carp in terms of flavor. Are you black?

They're really not that boney, you just need to know how to clean them. On every gar there's a big, solid chunk of meat near their tail. If you cut above their ribs or whatever and stop at about halfway up their back you'll got a solid slab of meat with no bones in it.
I'm referring specifically to the fags from San Fran or LA who think anyone who can hunt or fish is a hillbilly. But in general I said that because people associate eating gar with lower class people, like Cajuns and niggers

They'll latch onto you easily if you lead their head onto you though.
And whenever you get a corpse in the water they'll have a feast.

I personally love tilapia because it's thick/"meaty", it doesn't flake like cod does, and holds its flavour well in that kind of buttery almost poultry-like base that makes it excellent to replace meat in normally-meat-centric dishes (like curries/stews).

Yeah, LA can drop into the ocean for all I care (although they do pull in most of the state's revenue, due to Hollywood), but San Francisco isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Sure, there's a lot of idiots there, but believe me, there's plenty of red blooded, hearty Americans there who will eat any kind of fish, meat, whatever. I live about 100 miles north of SF, but I go down there for concerts and stuff like that. It's really pretty chill.
That said, I grew up in TX, so I've eaten gar before, it was tasty. We fished a lot growing up too, mostly catfish, bass, and at the coast redfish.

Catfish can be good if they're grown rather than wild. Also raw is best type fish.

i can't think of a single freshwater fish that id eat raw, whereas I've had almost every saltwater fish raw, other than the obvious ones that aren't "clean" like swordfish

but if we're getting into saltwater fish... my new obsession is Black Seabass. Over the last 4 or 5 years they have really come into the north atlantic in huge quantities. they are easy to catch and plentiful. and OH SO DELICIOUS. its like a sweet subtle buttery quality to the meat, delicate and subtle tasting, but not so delicate like sole that they are easy to fuck up.

Getting me excited for spring.

Walleye
Trout
Crappie
Channel/blue Catfish
Smallmouth bass

Honestly though, it's all about how you filet and prepare the fish. I've seen people fuck up some of my top 5 here, and I've had some very well prepared "trash" fish like mud cat and hybrid bass.

Pic related
hybrid bass we caught last summer

Garbage fish that tastes like mud

>eating pacific silver sockeye before they start going up river to spawn

This guy...

I've only eaten perch twice but it wasn't bad.

Like any fish you have to know specifically how best to prepare it. A good perch though you can just burn over a nice fire. Perch is a lesser known high quality fish.

hybrids are great. i wouldn't call them a trash fish at all.

This guy knows very well what he's talking about.

At least in the sense that steelhead and sockeye are without a doubt the best. I pity any peson that hasn't had at least one of them properly prepared.

Sockeye, properly seasoned and not overcooked is the absolute best fish. Or maybe a western cutthroat trout. You've never tasted the best fish in the world otherwise. It must be wild however, accept no substitutes.