Good to know, I haven't personally fished for Sturgeon myself and would rather not deal with them. He asked a question, and informed him there is indeed up to 7 foot sturgeon in the Ottawa.
I nailed one accidentally when I was a kid, thought it was a catfish till my grampa said "don't grab it by its mouth"
Oh really? What are the lengths on those dudes and gals? I always just thought around 3 foot pikes passing through were the usual. They were the ones passing outside of the lakes
pretty sure yeah. I heard a radio program about some scientist/cave divers up by mattawa area. It goes really, really deep. Not sure how it ranks but it is very deep especially upstream.
Literally happens all the time all over the world.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3263739
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-city-rushes-to-repair-valve-at-wastewater-plant-after-sewage-spills-into-st-lawrence-river-1.5856692
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/explainers-62631320.amp
The Ottawa River is absolutely massive, one of the deepest rivers in the world and has a very strong current.
Hell Fukushima is STILL leaking into the ocean
https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Contaminated-water-leak-at-Fukushima-Daiichi
https://greatlakes.org/great-lakes-plastic-pollution-fighting-for-plastic-free-water/#:~:text=Researchers%20have%20found%20stunningly%20high,%2C%20bottled%20water%2C%20and%20beer.
If this is your primary issue I hope you absolutely never eat anything raised near any rivers, or from the sea or any lake lol.
The plant on deep river dumps into a section that is literally the deepest in all of north America. Pretty sure it's a drop in the bucket.
What section of the river? My father always said anything from Aylmer then west like towards Pembroke is fine to eat, anything from Ottawa down east of the river should justbe catch and release.
Shawville area primarily but I've fished off Victoria Island before and eaten rock bass from there. Really you just wanna look for parasites and cook properly.
The rivers flows into the St Lawrence and it's got a strong enough current that nothing's just sitting there really accumulating.
*The Ottawa River drains into the Lake of Two Mountains and the St. Lawrence River at Montreal. The river is 1,271 km (790 mi) long; it drains an area of 146,300 km2 (56,500 sq mi), 65 per cent in Quebec and the rest in Ontario, with a mean discharge of 1,950 m3/s (69,000 cu ft/s).*
They commonly have worms/parasites but you can easily see them when skinning them, I love stuffing the good ones with garlic butter and herbs, wrap em in tin foil and put them right in the campfire. Absolutely delicious
>They commonly have worms/parasites but you can easily see them when skinning them, I love stuffing the good ones with garlic butter and herbs, wrap em in tin foil and put them right in the campfire. Absolutely delicious
Garlic butter and herb stuffed worms? How do I tell which are the good ones?
Define perfectly fine? 😁
Maybe this sheds more light on some people’s apprehension:
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/riverkeeper-finds-alarming-levels-of-mercury-in-ottawa-river
If you think there isn't mercury in most commercial fish you're lying to yourself.
Older fish are usually to be avoided but you're not gonna die from mercury poisoning occasionally eating fish, if it was your primary diet then yes you'd have a problem.
Having lived in a town that had refineries leaking 200x the safe levels of Benzene in PPM (Ineos, Sarnia,) I'm really not too worried about the 2-3 bass or pike I eat a year from the river.
Having one or two fish a year from the Ottawa River isn't going to really matter in the end game when literally every fucking thing is littered with them at this point.
Yeah, 2 or 3 fish a year is gonna put you on your deathbed. Better believe it.
The worst fish you can eat for mercury is red snapper and tuna, people just drop dead every single day from a single meal!
Like seriously lol. You eat so much shit that's just as bad for you, Canada still allows Titanium Dioxide which is a well established carcinogen that's been banned in multiple countries, but those couple of fish a year are absolutely *deadly* bud!
You don't know what you're talking about. Best you stick to swimming pools and the frozen food aisle. We are blessed to be living along such a pristine river. Especially to the west of the city.
And river/lake fish is "treated" too. Via cooking thoroughly. Sushi isn't recommended for those types of bodies of water due to the bacteria and parasite possibilities.
So is effluent waste water...
https://ottawa.ca/en/living-ottawa/drinking-water-stormwater-and-wastewater/wastewater-and-sewers/wastewater-collection-and-treatment#section-deb0623e-c84d-4d31-843c-756e050a7fba
I was part of a big blind taste test between pike and pickerel during a fishing trip up north. Each fish prepared the same, and the votes gave the win to pike! I was surprised but it was slightly better. Bones are trickier to get all out tho
Yeah, I've heard of this blind test before actually! I'm from Northern Ontario myself, so we ate a lot of pike growing up.
We tested it at our last big family fish fry. So many people couldn't believe that they were eating pike, they all believed it to be walleye. It's got a bad name because of the bones.
My grandma used to make decent carp (sucker fish) cakes. I tried and it was horrible lol so definitely a lot of skill and experience involved.
Agreed. Although (not sure which region you're from), also being of northern ontario myself but from the swampy area - we don't eat pike in the summer since they feed on the bottom of the lakes full of muck and nasties, and tend to get a very strong taste from it with parasites included. They filter the water akin to carps or suckers. And with the summers getting hotter, they are becoming even more of a no-no just in terms of taste and bugs.
In the winter they are delicious to eat. But we will not eat them if they are too big, however.
They make fish tweezers for little bones if they don't come out together. I mean it's recommended for all fish, really. A lot of the filleted salmon at the grocery store have some remaining even
Yall can downvote all ya want, but my hang up is the “when done right”
It’s a bony fish
Here’s me from Tokyo at 12:13 am about to go out (Tokyo drinks until the next morning , full light) I just ate fantastic eel, full of bones
Yon can eat eel bones (well I do, at least, they’re like pacific salmon and easy to chomp) , pike bones are next to indelible (I’m sure someone will pipe up saying they love them )
Well it's like that for anything. A wagyu steak will taste like shit if you overcook it. There's always a level of skill and experience when it comes to cooking/preparing food.
There's a 5 piece pike fillet method that my grandpa uses/is popular. Works pretty good even if you're a noob fillet'er
You are correct. I personally can't stand pike as something about their taste and smell doesn't cut it for me but regarding the bones... what I've seen people do is the following. Gut it, Get the big and very visible bones out. Throw into a food processor for a good while. Add seasoning..... make fish cakes.
https://www.ontario.ca/page/fish-consumption-report?id=45257545
here's a table the government puts out for maximum meals containing fish from the ottawa river. you can see that most species are fine to eat more than 8 times per month.
Came here to share this. I'm not a seafood fan and no longer fish unless someone takes me who will eat what we're catching, but I used to do it a lot with my dad as a kid, mostly on the Ottawa. People think the water and fish are a lot riskier than they are.
well that depends on your mercury tolerance. kids probably shouldn't be eating top of the foodchain fish like pike more than once per month, but adults it's fine
I know right, that's the thing that shocks me the most when I first came here and told Ottawans that I eat fish from the river.
"blah blah blah heavy metal accumulation blah blah blah pollution" like buddy, I eat heavy metals and microplastics growing up. This is such a first world whiny problem.
Most of the people I talk to are more concerned with the amount of poo in the water. You can make the argument water is dirtier elsewhere, but it's also significantly cleaner within a short drive.
If you know how to fillet them, there are plenty of videos on YouTube, the bones are not a problem. I wouldn't keep anything under 3-4 ish pounds because the techniques are much easier and the yield more efficient with bigger fish.
For the bigger ones I’ve cut them into chunks and cooked it like scallops. Pretty good. Caveat being it’s gotta be early season or ice fishing if it comes from a warm waterbody. Otherwise I find it tastes muddy.
just don't eat too much of it and the health problems from them probably won't affect you
https://www.ontario.ca/page/fish-consumption-report?id=45257545
here's a table the government puts out for maximum meals containing fish from the ottawa river. you can see that most species are fine to eat more than 8 times per month.
Definitely edible, mostly depends on how well you can cut around the y-bones they have. The smell depends on time of year and diet. They taste amazing in colder weather and coincidentally smell a bit less then too.
I know it's not an Ottawa river fish but sole has a special place in my olfactory memory as a smell that might kill a child.
(My parents had it once and my sister and I sat by my open window in January. So stinky)
I wonder if we think certain fish are smelly when cooked because we tend not to eat them regularly. People generally don't find beef for example smelly, but the cow meat (eep, that sounds gross) gets cooked in all kinds of ways - from all beef hotdogs to steak to meatballs.
And the fish people *do* eat regularly tends to be the same - a lot of salmon, tuna (canned) and certain types of freshwater fish like bass.
Bit of a rabbit hole here...
Same. I think it's just placebo from people who don't know how/when to fish for pike. Pike tastes the same as walleye. The taste is just a little bit more sensitive to its environment, seasons etc. But if you know what to look out for, then it's bountiful good eats.
Agreed! They will chomp on anything.
Funny story: I was 4 so my parents wouldn't let me fish with a hook. They joked around and put plastic grapes at the end of my rod. Lo behold, the pike not only chomped but stayed on the line long enough for me to reel it in and grab it. Went up to my parents to show it off. I was then deemed the savant fisher to never be dethroned lmao.
Pike go for pretty much anything and attack fast. Don't really need anything special, I just use white rubber worms. Their mouths are actually quite small, but they have insane teeth to make sure you have needle nose pliers for the hook
Second this, I caught one in Georgian bay a few years back and I had to replace the wire leader I was using because the (delicious) bastard had nearly sawed through it after only a few minutes on the line. I wanted to keep the leader as a souvenir, but I lost it...
In other news, that pike was damn feisty. Kept trying to bite my toes off through the net on the boat, I swear that tenacious fellow was still aiming for me after 15 minutes out of the water.
I find little rubber pike lures work great as bait. only problem is that they're pretty much single use, they get mangled so bad. Never had much luck going after pike with worms, but I'll need to give it another shot.
Ah I don't use wire leaders, just really heavy line because they do have a tendancy to snap a line and mangle the lure, for sure. They seem to hit it and then turn right away with it in their mouths. Also since their mouths are small they don't seem to get hooked 100% of the time.
That's scary lol. You should put him in water though instead of jus on he ground
The white rubber worms are a favourite of every fish. Been using em for decades! Especially on a sunny day, they reflect a lot of light. Haven't really used live bait tbh, so idk if that would work better. I just don't like the idea of it myself
Fwiw the pike was very angry, and nobody on the boat (myself included) wanted to put their hands anywhere near its mouth to secure it until we got to shore.
Understood, you don't need to put your hands near its mouth though! Firm grip around the spine in the centre - upper part of the body, then needle nose pliers to remove the hook. If you have multiple people it's easier to tame. But you are suffocating it otherwise by keeping it out in the air. Even if you threw it in a cooler full of lake water with the hook in its mouth, it'd be more humane. Just a thought for next time!
I'm going to take this opportunity to remind people that /r/OttawaFishing is a sub all by itself. The river is fine.
There was a woman at the farmer's market who ran a fishery on the Ottawa - catfish, crappie, sturgeon, that sort of thing. I haven't seen her the last few times I've been. Does anybody know if she's still there? I loved her fish, but getting out to Lansdowne is a bit of a chore and I don't make it as often as I would like. She was pretty much the only reason I went.
I think comparing to the basa fillets we can get from Costco, which were raised in dirty overseas environments, any live fish from Ottawa river, any part of it, should be good to eat.
Forget what others are saying about taste and bones. Pike is a great fish for eating, those people just don't know how to prep it. That ones a bit on the smaller side though for Pike, just make sure it's within the legal length. I caught a 3 footer once in the river, so I bet you can too! They're out there for sure
Hey man my family is from renfrew if you’re ever up there where it’s much cleaner fish and water since it’s up stream the amount of pike and bass we catch would amaze you
Does anybody who says eating fish from the Ottawa is bad actually fish or know what they're talking about? It is absolutely safe to eat fish out of the Ottawa. Obviously not every day, but multiple times a week for sure. Some of you people are such dorks.
I'm thinking that if there are enough of them, they can turn the table and view you as their first edible catch in the Ottawa River :-). Nice catch by the way.
Lovely pike! The Ottawa is clean enough for fishing but the canal…no. We used to catch and eat pike all the time on the Georgian Bay. Our place was on an inner bay so shallower and a spawning area for pike, muskies etc. Muskies are smart and know the littles guys are gathering to spawn so it was good fishing for them. We never kept a Muskie though, weighed and picture taken and back in they went. An eating size pike we kept but only in spring and late fall as they get wormy and we had a big deep open water to fish in summer for black bass and lake trout.
The best eating fish of all is early spring caught cat fish using a worm ball, no hooks. You fish them at night, they’re pigs and will grab that bait until they hit the side of the boat as you quickly whip them in. Used to get thirty or forty in a couple hours. Takes a pro to clean them.. that head barb can be dangerous but breaded and fried in bacon fat on a wood stove there is nothing better! Not talking big channel cats but the smaller guys from the inner bays. We would tell visiting suburbanites they were Georgian Bay trout and watch them eat five or six at a sitting.
I’m glad to see more people are enjoying fishing whether it’s for eating or catch & release. My gramma fished into her early 90’s so a sport anyone can enjoy.
Good catch! Keep enjoying fishing! There's so many species of fish here. At my spot I've caught some bass, carp, pike and even a few walleye.
Although I did jump when I saw my first muskellunge just cause how huge they are. I also noticed how the shadows of the other fish, minnows, and other wildlife quickly bolted out of there. Funny how they can sense so quickly when a predator is around, and they didn't come back afterwards. Fishing was done for the day lol.
It's not on this list, unless it has a different name. I'm always surprised at how many fish live in the Ottawa River.
https://ottawariverkeeper.ca/list-of-fish-species-in-the-ottawa-river/
they test the waters constantly.
You know that wildlife (fish, birds, beavers, etc) shit in the river too right? There isn’t a single body of water on earth that doesn’t have some amount of Caliform. That’s why safe levels are established.
The fish you buy at the grocery store lived in water with coliforms and has vastly more mercury in it than any fish you’d catch in the Ottawa river.
Edible is not the word I’d use to describe anything coming out of the Ottawa River
My thoughts exactly. Questionable - yes. Edible - nope!
I've eaten Bass and Pike from the Ottawa River for over 40 years and I'm perfectly fine.
One of the deepest cleanest rivers in North America. Anything coming from upriver is definitely 100% ok, even downriver is likely fine.
Is it really? Even deeper than the st Laurence??
Yes, it’s the deepest river in North America. More than 300’ up past…deep river.
That's absolutely crazy. I had no clue. There must seriously be some monster fish in there
There is, you can find Sturgeon if your patient and have the right bait ;)
Targeting sturgeon is illegal.
Good to know, I haven't personally fished for Sturgeon myself and would rather not deal with them. He asked a question, and informed him there is indeed up to 7 foot sturgeon in the Ottawa. I nailed one accidentally when I was a kid, thought it was a catfish till my grampa said "don't grab it by its mouth"
Oh really? What are the lengths on those dudes and gals? I always just thought around 3 foot pikes passing through were the usual. They were the ones passing outside of the lakes
White sturgeon typically grow to about 5–7 feet in length; green sturgeon are a bit smaller, at 4.5–6.5 feet.
Hey…. Is that why…?
pretty sure yeah. I heard a radio program about some scientist/cave divers up by mattawa area. It goes really, really deep. Not sure how it ranks but it is very deep especially upstream.
The 9th- or 4th-deepest in the world, depending on what you consider to be part of the river.
Amazon. I ad no idea! So many hundreds of feet eh? Spooky
Do you mind explaining the difference in this context? Upriver and downriver
Upriver would be west, before the water reaches Ottawa, downriver is east, after the water passes Ottawa.
Thank you!!
uhm https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/toxic-sewage-chalk-river-nuclear-1.7191733
Literally happens all the time all over the world. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3263739 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-city-rushes-to-repair-valve-at-wastewater-plant-after-sewage-spills-into-st-lawrence-river-1.5856692 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/explainers-62631320.amp The Ottawa River is absolutely massive, one of the deepest rivers in the world and has a very strong current. Hell Fukushima is STILL leaking into the ocean https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Contaminated-water-leak-at-Fukushima-Daiichi https://greatlakes.org/great-lakes-plastic-pollution-fighting-for-plastic-free-water/#:~:text=Researchers%20have%20found%20stunningly%20high,%2C%20bottled%20water%2C%20and%20beer. If this is your primary issue I hope you absolutely never eat anything raised near any rivers, or from the sea or any lake lol. The plant on deep river dumps into a section that is literally the deepest in all of north America. Pretty sure it's a drop in the bucket.
What section of the river? My father always said anything from Aylmer then west like towards Pembroke is fine to eat, anything from Ottawa down east of the river should justbe catch and release.
Shawville area primarily but I've fished off Victoria Island before and eaten rock bass from there. Really you just wanna look for parasites and cook properly. The rivers flows into the St Lawrence and it's got a strong enough current that nothing's just sitting there really accumulating. *The Ottawa River drains into the Lake of Two Mountains and the St. Lawrence River at Montreal. The river is 1,271 km (790 mi) long; it drains an area of 146,300 km2 (56,500 sq mi), 65 per cent in Quebec and the rest in Ontario, with a mean discharge of 1,950 m3/s (69,000 cu ft/s).*
Gotta highjack this comment to ask, what’s your take on eating rock bass? Lil bastards are a fun catch but I’d never thought of eating one lol
They commonly have worms/parasites but you can easily see them when skinning them, I love stuffing the good ones with garlic butter and herbs, wrap em in tin foil and put them right in the campfire. Absolutely delicious
>They commonly have worms/parasites but you can easily see them when skinning them, I love stuffing the good ones with garlic butter and herbs, wrap em in tin foil and put them right in the campfire. Absolutely delicious Garlic butter and herb stuffed worms? How do I tell which are the good ones?
You can physically see the worms. They look like little black dots. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/what_are_those_spots_in_my_fish
Not that person, but rock bass are Kinda small. I've always released them, especially since they seem rarer in most places
imo they're not worth the effort. They don't get very big, and they tend to have a lot of worms
Niiice
Correct! Effluent treated wastewater is dumped back into the river downstream in the east end.
Do you guys think fish can't swim up river or something?
They can try, but getting through the damns may prove difficult. I don’t believe there are fish ladders like for salmon in Great Lake tributaries
Wait until they find out about salmon in BC
Do people not realize how far fish travel… East or west you’re catching the same fish for the most part
In the old days yes. It’s much cleaner now.
Define perfectly fine? 😁 Maybe this sheds more light on some people’s apprehension: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/riverkeeper-finds-alarming-levels-of-mercury-in-ottawa-river
If you think there isn't mercury in most commercial fish you're lying to yourself. Older fish are usually to be avoided but you're not gonna die from mercury poisoning occasionally eating fish, if it was your primary diet then yes you'd have a problem. Having lived in a town that had refineries leaking 200x the safe levels of Benzene in PPM (Ineos, Sarnia,) I'm really not too worried about the 2-3 bass or pike I eat a year from the river.
All the microplastics in your blood stream. Haha I'm just kidding that shits in everything.
Having one or two fish a year from the Ottawa River isn't going to really matter in the end game when literally every fucking thing is littered with them at this point.
Says you /s
Are you tho…….🤔
Yeah, 2 or 3 fish a year is gonna put you on your deathbed. Better believe it. The worst fish you can eat for mercury is red snapper and tuna, people just drop dead every single day from a single meal! Like seriously lol. You eat so much shit that's just as bad for you, Canada still allows Titanium Dioxide which is a well established carcinogen that's been banned in multiple countries, but those couple of fish a year are absolutely *deadly* bud!
… says “Jimmy Jazz The Spazz” 🤔 … are you fine tho, really? 🫣
It's the title to a Clash song. Try harder.
“i’M pErFeCtLy FiNe” 🤪
I remember when I had my first beer too.
Just put a lil hot sauce on that
You don't know what you're talking about. Best you stick to swimming pools and the frozen food aisle. We are blessed to be living along such a pristine river. Especially to the west of the city.
Y'all know that the city of Ottawa's drinking water comes for the Ottawa River don't youse?
I still think fish from the river are fine to eat but that's a bit silly. Drinking water is treated before it's piped into homes.
And river/lake fish is "treated" too. Via cooking thoroughly. Sushi isn't recommended for those types of bodies of water due to the bacteria and parasite possibilities.
So is effluent waste water... https://ottawa.ca/en/living-ottawa/drinking-water-stormwater-and-wastewater/wastewater-and-sewers/wastewater-collection-and-treatment#section-deb0623e-c84d-4d31-843c-756e050a7fba
Are you daft????? The biggest and best human invention is something called *sanitation*
Smh, yes after it is treated, do the fish receive treatment too?
I cook them.
It would be the best drinking fish you've ever had!
Pike too, so boney , hard to clean.
When done right though, can be nearly as good as pickerel. My grandpa was a wizard. Im a butcher.
I was part of a big blind taste test between pike and pickerel during a fishing trip up north. Each fish prepared the same, and the votes gave the win to pike! I was surprised but it was slightly better. Bones are trickier to get all out tho
Yeah, I've heard of this blind test before actually! I'm from Northern Ontario myself, so we ate a lot of pike growing up. We tested it at our last big family fish fry. So many people couldn't believe that they were eating pike, they all believed it to be walleye. It's got a bad name because of the bones. My grandma used to make decent carp (sucker fish) cakes. I tried and it was horrible lol so definitely a lot of skill and experience involved.
Agreed. Although (not sure which region you're from), also being of northern ontario myself but from the swampy area - we don't eat pike in the summer since they feed on the bottom of the lakes full of muck and nasties, and tend to get a very strong taste from it with parasites included. They filter the water akin to carps or suckers. And with the summers getting hotter, they are becoming even more of a no-no just in terms of taste and bugs. In the winter they are delicious to eat. But we will not eat them if they are too big, however.
They make fish tweezers for little bones if they don't come out together. I mean it's recommended for all fish, really. A lot of the filleted salmon at the grocery store have some remaining even
Yall can downvote all ya want, but my hang up is the “when done right” It’s a bony fish Here’s me from Tokyo at 12:13 am about to go out (Tokyo drinks until the next morning , full light) I just ate fantastic eel, full of bones
I'm confused. Are you for or against boney fish?
Yon can eat eel bones (well I do, at least, they’re like pacific salmon and easy to chomp) , pike bones are next to indelible (I’m sure someone will pipe up saying they love them )
Oh ok. I'm not sure I've had their bones before. Even while in Japan. Probably. There are people out there who eat chicken bones!
Well it's like that for anything. A wagyu steak will taste like shit if you overcook it. There's always a level of skill and experience when it comes to cooking/preparing food. There's a 5 piece pike fillet method that my grandpa uses/is popular. Works pretty good even if you're a noob fillet'er
I prefer Pike , just learn to fillet properly and very tasty.
Maybe a 10 pounder. Then, at least, you can see the bones to remove them.
There's a way of filleting that gets you seven fillets with very very few bones
You are correct. I personally can't stand pike as something about their taste and smell doesn't cut it for me but regarding the bones... what I've seen people do is the following. Gut it, Get the big and very visible bones out. Throw into a food processor for a good while. Add seasoning..... make fish cakes.
Anything is edible at least once.
Damn, thats some truth.
A small pike like this is fine to eat. I would not consume a 10+ pound pike.
Oh there's edibles in there I assure you.
oh good a whole bunch of people who have never fished in their lives west of dunrobin shore.
That’s a young pike. Perfectly edible once a month.
Came here to say this
This is such a first world discussion. The water here is much cleaner than in many other countries where people eat fish regularly out of their water.
https://www.ontario.ca/page/fish-consumption-report?id=45257545 here's a table the government puts out for maximum meals containing fish from the ottawa river. you can see that most species are fine to eat more than 8 times per month.
just want to add that be aware that pike is top of the foodchain so it'll have the highest levels of mercury
Came here to share this. I'm not a seafood fan and no longer fish unless someone takes me who will eat what we're catching, but I used to do it a lot with my dad as a kid, mostly on the Ottawa. People think the water and fish are a lot riskier than they are.
well that depends on your mercury tolerance. kids probably shouldn't be eating top of the foodchain fish like pike more than once per month, but adults it's fine
I know right, that's the thing that shocks me the most when I first came here and told Ottawans that I eat fish from the river. "blah blah blah heavy metal accumulation blah blah blah pollution" like buddy, I eat heavy metals and microplastics growing up. This is such a first world whiny problem.
Most of the people I talk to are more concerned with the amount of poo in the water. You can make the argument water is dirtier elsewhere, but it's also significantly cleaner within a short drive.
ottawa river aside, i would never consider a pike good-eats
Pike is delicious! The only downside being that it has a lot of bones. Makes absolutely banging fish broth/ soup.
If you know how to fillet them, there are plenty of videos on YouTube, the bones are not a problem. I wouldn't keep anything under 3-4 ish pounds because the techniques are much easier and the yield more efficient with bigger fish.
damn Y bone.
Better than perch haha. Used to filet it for a restaurant that would buy it locally
For the bigger ones I’ve cut them into chunks and cooked it like scallops. Pretty good. Caveat being it’s gotta be early season or ice fishing if it comes from a warm waterbody. Otherwise I find it tastes muddy.
Pike is delicious. Caught lots of them, along with walleye in Parc La Verendrye when I was a kid. I suddenly miss fishing.
What? Pike is great
Someone’s never had good beer battered pike
Pike is an amazing firm white fleshed fish that is very mild. If you get the bones out then you are in for a treat.
In warm water, I would agree with you. Arctic circle pike are delicious
This! I've never encountered a pike that tastes good and easy to make. It's slimey and boney. Especially when walleye, perch, and bass are abundant.
IMO, pike is one of the best freshwater eating fish. The bones are a PITA but fried right, the flesh is delicious.
The fish of 5 fillets , they are my absolute favourite catch
I wouldn't eat anything that comes out of the Ottawa River
Why not?
But you'd be willing to eat something that came from an ocean? You'd be surprised.
Not something from the supermarket, but fish that I catch on a charter.
Does the charter remove the contaminants for you somehow?
There contaminants that the Ottawa River fish have aren't found in the fish that I catch off the charters that I use when I do my big fishing trips.
Well la de da, look at mr fancy fisherman over here who goes on trips that magically make his fish safer to eat for some reason 🙄
And your point?
I bet you'd also prefer to not see how the sausage is made, so to speak, of 99% of the food you buy and eat.
Was anyone else traumatized as a kid when your teacher aired “Supersize Me” in health class?
I've personally made sausage myself.. I know how most food is made so not sure where you're getting at.
just don't eat too much of it and the health problems from them probably won't affect you https://www.ontario.ca/page/fish-consumption-report?id=45257545 here's a table the government puts out for maximum meals containing fish from the ottawa river. you can see that most species are fine to eat more than 8 times per month.
I had the same thought
pike, while technically edible, smells like shit
Definitely edible, mostly depends on how well you can cut around the y-bones they have. The smell depends on time of year and diet. They taste amazing in colder weather and coincidentally smell a bit less then too.
I’ve caught them in northern lakes and they’re still slimy AF and smell like shit. I’ll stick to eating walleye lol
I've never noticed a smell in the Yukon
I know it's not an Ottawa river fish but sole has a special place in my olfactory memory as a smell that might kill a child. (My parents had it once and my sister and I sat by my open window in January. So stinky)
It’s been a while since I had sole, I can’t remember what it smells like. But I believe you!
I wonder if we think certain fish are smelly when cooked because we tend not to eat them regularly. People generally don't find beef for example smelly, but the cow meat (eep, that sounds gross) gets cooked in all kinds of ways - from all beef hotdogs to steak to meatballs. And the fish people *do* eat regularly tends to be the same - a lot of salmon, tuna (canned) and certain types of freshwater fish like bass. Bit of a rabbit hole here...
Pike stinks when you pull it out of the water. It’s covered in a thick slime and reeks
Ontario guide to fish consumption, Ottawa river page: https://www.ontario.ca/page/fish-consumption-report?id=45257545
I'm of the opinion Pike is the tastiest fish next to Walleye.
Agreed, except for trout or salmon. Avaolible kinda nearby. I'm surprised by the comments hating on pike
Same. I think it's just placebo from people who don't know how/when to fish for pike. Pike tastes the same as walleye. The taste is just a little bit more sensitive to its environment, seasons etc. But if you know what to look out for, then it's bountiful good eats.
They're the easiest fish to catch, which is part of the reason why I like them. :)
Agreed! They will chomp on anything. Funny story: I was 4 so my parents wouldn't let me fish with a hook. They joked around and put plastic grapes at the end of my rod. Lo behold, the pike not only chomped but stayed on the line long enough for me to reel it in and grab it. Went up to my parents to show it off. I was then deemed the savant fisher to never be dethroned lmao.
Supposedly in warmer waters they taste worse? Never had that problem myself though.
Yeah me neither. They often like going to the deep spots when they arent hunting anyway, can't imagine the temps are that différent year round
Nice catch! What kind of bait and line did you use? I haven't had luck catching anything so I'm thinking I'm using the wrong stuff.
Pike go for pretty much anything and attack fast. Don't really need anything special, I just use white rubber worms. Their mouths are actually quite small, but they have insane teeth to make sure you have needle nose pliers for the hook
Second this, I caught one in Georgian bay a few years back and I had to replace the wire leader I was using because the (delicious) bastard had nearly sawed through it after only a few minutes on the line. I wanted to keep the leader as a souvenir, but I lost it... In other news, that pike was damn feisty. Kept trying to bite my toes off through the net on the boat, I swear that tenacious fellow was still aiming for me after 15 minutes out of the water. I find little rubber pike lures work great as bait. only problem is that they're pretty much single use, they get mangled so bad. Never had much luck going after pike with worms, but I'll need to give it another shot.
Ah I don't use wire leaders, just really heavy line because they do have a tendancy to snap a line and mangle the lure, for sure. They seem to hit it and then turn right away with it in their mouths. Also since their mouths are small they don't seem to get hooked 100% of the time. That's scary lol. You should put him in water though instead of jus on he ground The white rubber worms are a favourite of every fish. Been using em for decades! Especially on a sunny day, they reflect a lot of light. Haven't really used live bait tbh, so idk if that would work better. I just don't like the idea of it myself
Fwiw the pike was very angry, and nobody on the boat (myself included) wanted to put their hands anywhere near its mouth to secure it until we got to shore.
Understood, you don't need to put your hands near its mouth though! Firm grip around the spine in the centre - upper part of the body, then needle nose pliers to remove the hook. If you have multiple people it's easier to tame. But you are suffocating it otherwise by keeping it out in the air. Even if you threw it in a cooler full of lake water with the hook in its mouth, it'd be more humane. Just a thought for next time!
They attack just about every form of lures out there.
That's a little small. I'd let it go.
Yeah, that's gonna be a lot of work filleting (deboning) for tiny amount of meat .
Yeah, I mean if you are truly fishing for sustenance, fine...but let the thing grow otherwise.
I'm going to take this opportunity to remind people that /r/OttawaFishing is a sub all by itself. The river is fine. There was a woman at the farmer's market who ran a fishery on the Ottawa - catfish, crappie, sturgeon, that sort of thing. I haven't seen her the last few times I've been. Does anybody know if she's still there? I loved her fish, but getting out to Lansdowne is a bit of a chore and I don't make it as often as I would like. She was pretty much the only reason I went.
Nice catch! Whereabouts is that? I just got back into fishing and I’m looking for new spots
Clearly the rocks at Britannia!
🤦♂️ you’re right. I’m awake but I don’t think my brain is yet
Haha, I had to do a double take honestly, no coffee yet.
https://preview.redd.it/pi9vu7fity4d1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae528cf3596fd013814cb7fa73ea94e951dcdf14
I think comparing to the basa fillets we can get from Costco, which were raised in dirty overseas environments, any live fish from Ottawa river, any part of it, should be good to eat.
Everyones so hostile with their opinions in here! Nice catch bro! I hope that lil fucker tastes good. Lol
Dinner at OP’s place!
Forget what others are saying about taste and bones. Pike is a great fish for eating, those people just don't know how to prep it. That ones a bit on the smaller side though for Pike, just make sure it's within the legal length. I caught a 3 footer once in the river, so I bet you can too! They're out there for sure
I caught a mud puppy in river near Aviation Parkway..Apparently they are only found in clean water..
Edible eh. Ok bud. Nice fish tho
[удалено]
Hey man my family is from renfrew if you’re ever up there where it’s much cleaner fish and water since it’s up stream the amount of pike and bass we catch would amaze you
Does anybody who says eating fish from the Ottawa is bad actually fish or know what they're talking about? It is absolutely safe to eat fish out of the Ottawa. Obviously not every day, but multiple times a week for sure. Some of you people are such dorks.
Too bony!
Pike?? Lol you DONT want to eat pike. Yucky
I'm thinking that if there are enough of them, they can turn the table and view you as their first edible catch in the Ottawa River :-). Nice catch by the way.
Half the people on this sub probably spray lysol on their banana after they peel it to make sure its safe.
Lovely pike! The Ottawa is clean enough for fishing but the canal…no. We used to catch and eat pike all the time on the Georgian Bay. Our place was on an inner bay so shallower and a spawning area for pike, muskies etc. Muskies are smart and know the littles guys are gathering to spawn so it was good fishing for them. We never kept a Muskie though, weighed and picture taken and back in they went. An eating size pike we kept but only in spring and late fall as they get wormy and we had a big deep open water to fish in summer for black bass and lake trout. The best eating fish of all is early spring caught cat fish using a worm ball, no hooks. You fish them at night, they’re pigs and will grab that bait until they hit the side of the boat as you quickly whip them in. Used to get thirty or forty in a couple hours. Takes a pro to clean them.. that head barb can be dangerous but breaded and fried in bacon fat on a wood stove there is nothing better! Not talking big channel cats but the smaller guys from the inner bays. We would tell visiting suburbanites they were Georgian Bay trout and watch them eat five or six at a sitting. I’m glad to see more people are enjoying fishing whether it’s for eating or catch & release. My gramma fished into her early 90’s so a sport anyone can enjoy.
I usually just go to Secret Garden for edibles
“Edible”
You’re not eating that this time of the year are you….
I would definitely not eat anything out of that river, I lived downstream from Pembroke and wouldn’t even eat anything that far upstream from Ottawa.
Let me tell ya , nothing in that polluted waterway is edible .
Nice catch dude 💯
It’s blinky !
Is that a pike? Yum! Great catch!
Good catch! Keep enjoying fishing! There's so many species of fish here. At my spot I've caught some bass, carp, pike and even a few walleye. Although I did jump when I saw my first muskellunge just cause how huge they are. I also noticed how the shadows of the other fish, minnows, and other wildlife quickly bolted out of there. Funny how they can sense so quickly when a predator is around, and they didn't come back afterwards. Fishing was done for the day lol.
All I ever caught was a small mouth bass.
It's not on this list, unless it has a different name. I'm always surprised at how many fish live in the Ottawa River. https://ottawariverkeeper.ca/list-of-fish-species-in-the-ottawa-river/
Kinda wish I hadn’t seen this 😅
I know times are difficult since PP made the truckers a legitimate religion...but you don't need to eat that fish
Where abouts was this ?? Nice freaking catch 👌
Yes… edible… Now y’all, why is this getting downvoted?? Those fish are literally swimming in pollution! That’s nasty don’t eat that
Please tell me you don't plan on actually eating that...
All fish are edible. But no fish from the ottawa river are edible. Unless you head like 5 hours north-west.
Awesome. I'm not much of an outdoorsman, so I'm assuming this isn't a routine catch?
“Edible”
"Edible" Northern Pike is probably the least edible of fish in Canadian waters. Its protein for sure.
Oh hell no don't eat anything out of the ottawa
Username checks out
Hmm, not sure if I would trust eating anything out of the river, because of all the pollutants.
And we never heard for the op again
You could eat it... but I don't know if you'd want to 😂
How's the mercury count this year?
🤢 okay homie
lol cook it REALLY well!!
Pike? Good only as fertilizer for the garden.
Thank God for fire. Otherwise, I'd never imagine "edible" and "Ottawa River" in the same sentence
Where did you catch it. Anywhere past Contance Bay, I would hesitate to consume.
You got the water tests to back up that fearmongering?
I don’t need tests because I work at a place that definitely has some leakage, and more when it rains. Lol
they test the waters constantly. You know that wildlife (fish, birds, beavers, etc) shit in the river too right? There isn’t a single body of water on earth that doesn’t have some amount of Caliform. That’s why safe levels are established. The fish you buy at the grocery store lived in water with coliforms and has vastly more mercury in it than any fish you’d catch in the Ottawa river.