Anyone ever eat Bowfin? Some people call them grendel or shoepic or choupic.

[teufelhunden]

Anyone ever eat Bowfin? Some people call them grendel or shoepic or choupic.

[Douglas]

My wife cooked one once. She deep fried it and said it was "OK". I declined because I was full of Crappie fillets and the Bowfin meat looked kind a grey and jelly like.
I can imagine one caught in the winter would be fine fare.

[ETangler]

Never had it, doesn't sound good though.

[Beekeeper]

It is gray and jelly like. Had one experience with eating them on a fishless (except bowfin) float trip. They are edible, but I wouldn't go out of my way for them. They are great sport though.

[bowhunter352]

holycrap, never heard any of those names except bowfin... We call them "mudfish". No one around here eats them, they just bowfish them and then use them for gatorbait, or coyote bait. Theyr considered a trash fish.

[Del in KS]

Back home in Fla we called them mudfish or dogfish. They will bite you if you aren't careful. Never tried to eat one.

[rudyglove27]

I never tried to eat one and I don't think I would ever!!!

[Craig_ga]

While the taste of fried Bowfin is not that bad , I wouldn't advise anyone to eat it . Bowfin accumulate mercury in their flesh, and the older the fish the more mercury in the flesh .

[krzykwa]

They are actually really good. I ate lots in New Orleans. Only thing with them is you have to keep them alive till you are ready to cook or fry. There meat turns mushy if you don't fry right away. Best way I can tell you isan fillet and ybatter 1 inch strips and fry.

[Marcus Toole]

I've eaten them and found them pretty good. As indicated by a poster above, the quality of the meat diminishes presumptuously over less than a 24 hour period. The key to good bowfin is to fry it very fresh and to cut it up into fairly small pieces. If the fish is big and the fillets are thick they can be kind of jelly like even when fresh. That texture issue is addressed by slicing the fillets into "fish fingers".

[Marcus Toole]

As for the mercury issue, that would be true for any predatory fish that's at the top of the food chain including popular sport fish like bass and jack.

[Frederick Caston]

I've eaten them before and I'd have to say it's on the level with alligator gar. It's great when it's hot. Fried or in a tomato gravy over rice.

[Tiffany Williams_2]

I fish for choupique about once a year. I make boullettes out of them. For English folks, it's like a deep fried fish patty. In Louisiana they are also known as "cotton fish" which perfectly describes the texture unless prepared otherwise. They are difficult to fillet bc of the texture. However the meat is still usable as a fish patty.

[Misthula Blakely]

I have caught and cooked them. If you catch one, they are quite tasty when poached and then shred the meat off of the bones. I then used the meat to make cakes using my crab cake recipe. They turned out to be like a mock crab cake. I wouldn't throw one back if I caught it (in fact I caught one today in the Withlacoochee River, here in Central Florida. I have already poached it and am going to make my Prehistoric Fish Cakes out of it. I say that because, this fish has actually been around since the days of the Dinosaurs. It is Genetically perfect so it has never changed. I really think it deserves a little respect for that alone. Lol Its similar to the Snake head fish, in that it has lungs, and can breath both from the surface air, and through it's gills, thereby allowing it to survive for quite a while out of water. . It's has another distinction, being the only fish that has the dorsal fin that goes down his entire back. Bowfins are quite predatory to other game fish and have also been known to grow as big as 3 feet long and up to about 20 lbs. I see them as kind of a wonder of our modern world with all of that history.