re: Acme Oyster only fish is frozen asian

quote:

---

swai quality is more consistent than catfish unfortunately, at least with what is available from most major suppliers. catfish frequently has a "fishy" taste to it that swai doesn't have a problem with. it's unfortunate. good fresh catfish is the best, but i don't really see how our supply chain can sustain that at a level where every roadside eatery serving a fish poboy can get quality catfish.

---

Farm raised catfish does not have a fishy taste. When it was first being developed for farms Purina simply sold cat food to the farmers to use in the mid/late 70’s. Over the years they have developed much better food that floats. Farm raised catfish are no longer bottom feeders which makes them much cleaner tasting. There is no fishy taste in farm raised. And wild caught tastes like well wild.

American aquaculture is regulated by a lot of agencies including USDA, FDA and even NOAA. Sanitary, size, fish per acre and a host of other regulations that have helped the industry become what it is today which is a reliably, safe food source.

Mississippi has huge amounts of catfish farms as does Alabama which ships fresh and frozen all over the country. The ONLY reason SWAI is being used is because it is about a dollar a pound cheaper not because it is easier to get. It’s nothing more than a dollar line item for industrial food service suppliers and down the chain to the corporate restaurant groups all the way to owner operator.

It’s a shame that more don’t use them but it’s the almighty dollar that dictates.

I buy them sometimes by the case if we have big fish fries which we used to do. The best ones are the on the bone whole. If you look around you can find restaurants using them and that’s where I would spend my money. American made fish.

And notiger is right. Sphars does sell only wild caught Des Allemonds catfish and they are very good. Mittendorfs used to but uses farm raised now which as I said are very good these days as well.

quote:

---

Farm raised catfish does not have a fishy taste.

---

Good post. My local grocery in Georgia usually has Mississippi farm raised fresh catfish. It is so consistent and good.

And I really prefer bone in, but filets are easy and everyone likes them.

I've had tons of wild catfish over the years and it can be the best and it can be off.

Grocery store was out of filets last weekend and I had a small group coming for dinner Friday and I planned a fish fry.

Only option was tilapia, farm raised from Chile I think. Maybe Peru.

Anyway, it was very good fried. I was surprised.

quote:

---

Sphars

---

It’s Spahr’s but whatever. Good little spot. They stayed open for us one night coming in late headed to the Berry from NOLA.

Wild VS Pond raised catfish:

There are hundreds of thousands wild catfish in the Ox Bow lakes of Mississippi, along the Mississippi River - I'm sure it is the same on the Arkansas and Louisiana side, too. In Mississippi, you can get a commercial license to catch and sell wild catfish, caught either on trot lines, YoYo lines, grabbing from barrels sunk in the water, or in Hoop nets set in the chutes where there is current into or out of the lakes. Your lines or net must be tagged with your name and license number and running anyone's lines or nets without their permission (and I think they must be in the boat with you) is against the law - back in the 1970s, seen as just as bad as robbing a store.

I have a cousin in Cleveland, MS who back in the 1970's was a welder and commercial fisher man. He worked Beulah Lake at Rosedale and lake Whittington, at Benoit. His customers were mostly small restaurants who sold wild caught catfish and he had a very good customer base, because many folks preferred the taste of wild caught catfish, which is slightly stronger than farm raised.

I helped him run his trot lines and nets a few times. It was not unusual for him to bring in several hundred fish at the end of a run. You can imagine how much work there was to clean that many catfish. He is now in his 80's, maybe 90's, and too old for much of that stuff.

A side story. He caught a guy running his lines one night and threw him out of his boat on the far (desolate) end of Lake Whittington and took the guy's boat, leaving the guy in water about as deep as he was tall, over a mile across deep water from the closest dock, with hundreds of acres of marsh and snakes between him and the closest road to that part of the lake.

I was not there that night, but he always said the best way to get shot was to run someone's lines or nets. He was a good guy who might have shot you if you were running his lines. Those lakes were desolate enough that no one would ever find a properly disposed of body.

The best wild pig I ever had was from a hind quarter he smoked and had deer he cooked and dropped off at our hose many times. He could have easily been the guy they wrote the "Country boys can survive" song about.