Big Gou...

Here is a picture of a big gaspar gou, or a fresh water drum Cathy caught earlier in the week on the noodle lines. Thought we had a good fish there for a minute. He hit a big old wild shiner caught in the cast net.

Not to say the gou is not a good fish, he is just not a good eating fish. I have a Paul Prudhomme Cajun cook book which has several recipes that call for gou. It specifies gou "not more than a few hours fresh caught," or something like that. I do know that after you catch em, clean em, and freeze them when thawed and fried they are a bit on the rubbery side. Fresh caught they are pretty good. I have fried a few fresh and caught a big un on the river bank when I had a grill going and grilled him right up and it was a fitting feast. Course everything tastes better when outdoors.

Possibly the biggest fish I have caught out of Sam Rayburn on a rod and reel is a gou. Caught him when striper fishing maybe 20 years ago, pretty common catch, I have caught quite a few of them mixed with stripers and white bass. I had no scale to weigh him so no telling what he weighted. I can pretty much guess the weight on a bass or a catfish, just not much experience on guessing gou weight. Just like our feature fellow here, he was turned back to keep doing what ever it is gou do.

With all this note keep in mind that in 1995 the Texas Parks & wildlife recommended that keep your gou consumption to 4.6 meals per month to stay under the reference dose of mercury.

This same survey recommended not more than 18.9 meals of channel catfish per month. So far we are holding under that number.