Worms in fish???

Shot certain times of the year I remember every spec having worms.

Most trout will have them if you look hard enough

They are harmless but I always try to get out what I can. I do not let the wife know what I am doing though. If she saw me pulling worms out, she probably isn’t going to eat them

Not in reds or specks but some wild sockeye. Put some marinade on them and came back a few mins later to worms crawling out on my counter

This is pretty much why I quit speck fishing….i couldn’t get past that shite.

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Anyone else run into this?

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All the time. The worms you find in saltwater game fish are actually in their intermediate hosts, their main target host where they reproduce is in sharks.

The risk of eating the worms, even raw, is very low. They are adapted to parasitize cold-blooded aquatic species, not warm-blooded mammals.

That said, once they are cooked, they aren't going to parasitize anything, and I've never found them to affect the flavor of my fillets anyway.

Article on worms.
LINK

Not sure if still the case but trout caught in lake pontchartrain and in the marsh would not have worms but trout caught on the outside in Breton and cocodrie would have worms. Seemed like fish caught in fresher waters were clean and those caught in saltier water had worms. Was a year of low rivers so maybe saltier pretty much in all basins.