Here in Texas we have a Freshwater Drum we call a Gasper-Goo,anyone familiar with eem?
He is the only Purple fish I ever saw and get really big in Lake Brownwood and at Texoma as well.
I fried one up and what a waste,it was like chewin rubber…I felt guilty about takin it home.
You said it was a drum? And it was bad eats? around here, drum are trash, its one of those fish that conservation doesnt care what you do with it. Ive never seen a purple one and i hear drum in general are terrible no matter how you cook them. you live, you learn
David
I have heard of people eating goo, but I don’t know how they were fixed. Possibly as a fish stew? Going by how they smell when you pull em up, I don’t think I’ll ever try one. They stink!
DB, they are also called black drum. Depending on the water they are taken from, they can be anywhere from dark silver to dark purple.
From the TPWD Pamphlet:
“Although freshwater drum is considered a rough fish by many anglers, it is prized as a food fish in some areas. Drum are also sought after as bait for other species. In Texas the rod and reel record exceeds 30 pounds, and the trotline record is 55 pounds.”
Kirk
we have those in mississippi along with another favorite…the grennel…every year we hold a “trash fish” tournament and have a lot of fun. i still wouldnt eat one lol
’
any chance of a picture of this critter? we have a freshwater drum up here. Mostly silver, but often with a purplish tint. Taken out of clean water and prepared right, ours can be pretty tasty. Just wondering if it’s the same fish.Here’s a pic of ours
Bluegill,
That’s him. As a matter of fact, the last one I caught was just about that size. Silly thing hit a spinner bait out in the middle of Sam Rayburn. I’m still trying to figure out what he was doing way out there.
Kirk
Bluegill222,Yes Sir thats the fish I was talkin about.Here is another;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freshwater_drum
Back in my undergrad days at LSU, my fraternity’s St. Bernard shed so much hair that it clogged and wrecked our A.C. The huge A.C. repair bell had to be paid from the “kitchen/house” account, which then left our small fraternity short on funds for food.
In order to help alleviate this situation, our lovely old, alcoholic cook “Bee” brought our frat. brother/house manager (from Rhode Island) to a fish market “across the tracks” where he purchased about 400 or 500 lbs. of “Goo”. As it was purchased before any of us knew about the “deal”, we were stuck!
So, we ate Goo for lunch, a whole bunch of times… We did however have a couple of members who refused to even try our famous, Goo lunches…
Overall, it was good (or Bee was just a great cook!). However, as I remember, about every 10th piece had an muddy taste…
Of course, this Goo meat came from much larger fish than y’all have pictured above.
Bowfin47
This fish has 2 liddle flat Stones and round on 1 side in its head…I’ve heard that they accually rattle or make a sound and I’ve been told they make interesting jewelry.
i have some in my Striper Box from the last trip I took to Texoma a few years back. The larger the fish the larger the rocks.
Actually, the stones are part of the ear structure of the fish I think they are called otoliths or some such). You can age the fish by them, but they aren’t what makes the signature sound. That’s done with the swim bladder. My grandmother has a set of very nice earrings made from drum stones.
Bowfin-- I’ve eaten a lot of drum myself over the years. They’ll never be my favorite, but I’ve found the colder the water you catch them in, the better they taste. I usually keep a few in October or November. Don’t know if it’s a dietary change that comes with the cooler weather or what, but they aren’t bad at all then.
Yes Sir Bluegill I have intensions on havin some earrings made for my daughters someday just keep puttin it off.
If a person didn’t know what they were they’d never realize what they were…It seems kinda cruel ta dig em out.
Yes, those are ear stones; properly known as otoliths. There are three pair, but two pair are quite small. They are more or less equivalent to the three bones in our own middle ear. I have a pair from a 40-50 pound black drum that are nearly as big as a nickle in diameter that I made a pair of cuff-links with. And yes, they are used to determine the age of the fish. A new layer is added each year, resulting in the formation of ‘annular rings’, just like a tree.
The drum family, which includes the saltwater trout species, redfish and croakers, whiting, etc., all have a band of typically red muscle that runs lengthwise along the body cavity wall adjacent to the swimbladder. They vibrate the swimbladder with these muscles to make their drumming noise. Some species are more prone to ‘drum’ than others.
The black drum also has a horrific set of pharyngeal (throat) teeth that they use to crush the shell of the bivalves (clams and oysters) that they feed on. They root in the bottom like hogs, and a school of them can root out a hole several inches deep and several feet across when they find a clam bed. Quite a shock to step into one of these holes while wading, as they are often hidden under dense grass in the bays on the Texas middle and lower coasts.
aged sage
Jeffro-- It does seem a bit cruel, but I only dig the stones out of the fish that are being kept for the table. All others get released unharmed. As I said above, I keep a couple of smallish (2-3 pounds) ones each fall for the table anyway, so those I dig the stones out of.
I agree. They weren’t the best, nor the worst tasting fish that I’ve eaten. But considering that we had hundres of lbs. of Goo, a cook that knew os to cook Goo, and the money was gone… the Goo was half bad! We survived.
Actually, I’ve always been amazed at the fish biases/myths that I’ve seen over the years.
Bowfin47
jeffro:
I have never heard of anyone removing otoliths from live fish, as you infer. They are much easier reached from the decapitated head, than trying to excise while the fish is intact; at least that has been my experience. Helped remove them from the head of an estimated 400 pound jewfish that had washed up on the shore. Took an hour or so, and a good ax, to just get the head off! And nearly as much time to get to the otoliths.
bowfin47:
I feel the same way. Especially about the table qualities of so many different kinds of fish. Everyone badmouths the lowly European (German) carp as table fare. My German immigrant grandmother taught my dad and his brothers how to properly dress them. When handled in this manner, they are great table fare. Texas off-shore fishemen used to complain about how terrible king mackeral were as table fare. When the ‘dummies’ quit putting them in 35 gallon metal garbage cans on the deck of the boat, with no ice, where they stayed until the boat was docked, and started gilling and gutting them right away and putting them in an ice chest, they discovered how good they really are!
It is all in the way things are handled in the foeld 90% of the time.
aged sage
Here’s one I caught a couple weeks ago on spinning gear. 26" long. We call them either Freshwater Drum or Sheepshead. Having fished saltwater a little, I know there is another fish called a sheepshead, so I don’t use that name for this fish as often.
Way to go David…thats one I was talkin about…great photos !!!
Here are a couple of photos of the cuff-links I made using the otoliths from a black drum that was estimated to weigh close to 50 lbs. There is a very close relationship between otolith size and weight of the fish. Based on this, black drum otoliths found in Indian middens around Chesepeake Bay indicate that this fish often approached 200 lbs. once-upon-a-time!
aged sage
Very Nice Cuff Links Sir and quite large compared to the ones I have in my tackle box.
Thanks to you guys for sharing thoughts and photos.
jeffro:
Thanks for the compliment on the cuff links. I have never removed otoliths from freswater drum (gasper goo), so have no idea how they compare with those from black drum. Remember, these were from a near-50 pond black drum, caught in one of our coastal bays. Not an every-day-run-of-the-mill size, even for our bays.
aged sage