TOPIC:

I am pretty sure the Classic tries to only give away silver fish

Like was mentioned in the article and by a couple posters... there are risks in just about everything. Most fish have advisories for something. Health guidelines are just that, guidelines. Doctors say never to smoke but lots of people do. Same with drinking. Driving is a huge risk. And so on and so forth.

Lots of people will tell you they have been eating Lake Michigan fish all their lives and have no ill effects. Others choose to be cautious. Eating wild fish has health benefits of its own, aside from the contaminants. It's a complicated issue with a lot of nuances. Which is one reason states all have slightly different info. And even agencies within one state might tell you differing things.

My biggest concern is with kids and women of childbearing age. I keep a close watch on how much my wife eats, and how much my friends wives eat as many of them are planning to or have small kids. But I don't worry about it too much myself. I just trim away visible fat, and cook the fish in a way that helps shed fat

At the end of the day it is a personal decision, like anything.

So Ben, what happens to that mountain of grease that comes in from that tournament?
I know they bring them in, they need the weight...and this year if I remember correctly they can bring in 5?
Thanks for the info

Most of what I would say has been said earlier. One thing to consider: At least I know what's in the Lake Michigan fish I choose to eat. When's the last time you saw fish advisories for the fish you catch at Brookville Reservoir, the Kankakee River, Pine Lake or most other lakes and streams? Probably never and mostly because the DNR or other agencies can't check everywhere. So you eat a Brookville catfish or striper and ??????

Years ago when the "do-gooders" first started their publicity campaign about the dangers of eating Lake Michigan fish the Michigan Charter Association hired the same labs to test the fish they cleaned for their clients.

I don't know the protocol used these days, but back then, the testing was quite expensive. So the testers used "worst case scenarios" to find fish to test. The biggest, darkest, most mature specimens available - on the theory if that bad boy tested okay, most of the average fish would be better.

Also, not knowing how the fish would be cleaned, cooked or consumed, they made no assumptions and just ground up the whole, uncooked fish, head, guts, fins, fat, gonads and all, then tested the mix. No trimming allowed.

So the MCBA guys filetted and skinned the fish, trimmed visible fat, discarded the belly meat (as they do for their clients) and had the filets sampled. The result was 87% reduction in chemical residues in the meat - enough reduction that none of the fish would then meet the USDA action list.

All the fish advisories are based on the "pseudo science" called risk assessment. I say pseudo because it uses giant leaps of statistical assumptions to produce results. IE: Risk assessment: Jaywalking risks getting hit by garbage trucks. Statistics: one in 100,000 jaywalkers are hit by garbage trucks. Only one in a million pedestrians are hit by garbage trucks at crosswalks. Risk assessment is true. Of course, the garbage trucks don't drive at night. People who look both ways and jaywalk can avoid garbage trucks. Garbage truck drivers can be trained to avoid jaywalkers. Some roads are never driven by garbage trucks. Still, the risk assessment science about jaywalking and garbage trucks are used to "regulate" jaywalking, garbage trucks and garbage truck drivers. Good or bad? You decide.

Other risk assessment "facts." Compared to me eating a lake trout meal a week resulting in disease or death I'm at a far greater risk of disease or death from:
Driving to the lake on I-65
Breathing the air in Chicago
Getting shot in Chicago
Getting shot in Portage
Being bitten by a shark in Florida
Being hit by a foul ball at a baseball game
Getting food poisoning at a restaurant
Getting Montezuma's revenge in Mexico
Falling out of the boat and drowning
Riding a motorcycle
Slipping in the shower
Catching West Nile Virus from a mosquito
Being attacked by a bear in Alaska

Try a lake trout fish boil sometime. But watch out for the drawn butter you put on the fish and potatoes. Risk assessment science says it will kill you.

Great point Mike. There is a huge difference in grinding a whole fish up and testing it and then testing a trimmed fish fillet. Thanks for shedding a positive outlook backed up by facts. Makes me feel better as I trim my fish really good.

Finally, a voice of reason. I hope the guy that started this thread reads BN's take on the subject. I think if you are brave enough to eat a big king or coho and deal with what toxins they carry you can handle a little laker flesh now and then. I guess it is because I live in the southern part of the state I don't hear or read reports on issues dealing with the Great Lakes. The anti laker mania is bigger than I believed.

reel wrote:

So Ben, what happens to that mountain of grease that comes in from that tournament?
I know they bring them in, they need the weight...and this year if I remember correctly they can bring in 5?
Thanks for the info

I'm not sure, to be honest.

I'm pretty busy on tournament day trying to get weight, length, fin clips, coded wire tags, and a bunch of other tissue samples from 400 to 1000 fish in a very short period of time.

I would imagine that many of them get taken home by the anglers. And I know that a few probably go home with interested onlookers. Beyond that I couldn't tell you

Here's where I get lost in the argument: I'm all for consuming anything that comes out of the big lake and cleaning/preparing it to the healthiest methods you can come up with. Hell my grandfather lived to age 96 eating perch out of that lake practically every weekend during the good 'ole days when you brought 50qt coolers full home, not to mention eating other fish from that lake when supposedly pollution was at it's worst back in those days! That being said - and even with pollutants being now at their lowest levels supposedly - the science in this is simple: doesn't it make more sense to consume a fish that is only in the lake no more than 4 years (no matter what the size), vs. fish that were in the lake 10, 15 or even 20 years? I'll take my chances doing that any day, no matter what the species. I'm not even sure how silver fish factor into this argument when comparing to lakers, just based on life expectancy? Furthermore, if a 4 year old fish is that contaminated with PCB's (and whatever else they pick up rubbing their bellies on the bottom) that it needs an advisory, I think i'd be much more concerned then with the water that we drink as well from that lake and who knows what's in that! Granted, I know the argument isn't the same with sediment contaminant vs. water contaminants, but still something to consider.

The safety of our drinking water is a topic for a different discussion. If you are drinking city water straight from the tap...I wouldn't worry about the Lake Trout you are eating. As a plumber, I've tested water supplies in schools and commercial buildings straight from the drinking fountains and had them pass one day but 3 months later test well over the acceptable limits.

Matt, good questions.

Science can be simple in some cases... but even if it is simple, interpreting it into action is often more nuanced (like Mike said, risk assessment is a nebulous thing and is very tricky to translate from abstract into real-life implementation)

So, PCBs bioaccumulate. The higher something is on the food chain, the more they are bioaccumulating. PCBs in the sediment get incorporated into plankton, baitfish eat the plankton, predators eat the baitfish... each step up on the chain means more concentration of PCBs

PCBs are fat-soluble, not water soluble. So you shouldn't have a major concern over drinking the water because of PCBs. They are concentrated in bottom sediments and in organisms. (Although, separate argument, in general we should probably favor policies that don't pollute the water, no matter the type of pollutant, since many of them can have protracted legacy issues in the environment). Imagine if we didn't have any PCB issues in LM!

Since PCBs are fat soluble, fish with more oily flesh (e.g. lake trout) are more dangerous to eat, because more of the PCBs are integrated into the flesh, and harder to remove. Think of a good steak with a lot of marbling: it's pretty hard to get that fat out of the steak, which is why they taste so good. This gets down to what Mike was saying about the testing process, if you remove visible fat and only eat fillets, you are avoiding some PCB sources like the belly fat. But, in lake trout that is a bit harder to do as they have a lot more of the oily compounds in all their flesh. FYI when we are asked to provide samples for the health folks to test, we send them butterfly fillets in Indiana, scaled but skin-on.

Life expectancy has some nuance to it as well. A chinook grows so big so fast because it eats a LOT. A 3 year old chinook that weighs 15 pounds could easily have more PCBs in it than a 3 year old lake trout that weighs 4 pounds, because the chinook ate so much more in the same time period to grow to 15 pounds. Assuming they were eating the same thing, the chinook certainly has more PCBs because it ate way more to achieve that large weight over the same time period.

Finally, diet is another compounding factor. PCB levels had been trending down significantly since PCBs were banned in the late 1970s. With the explosion of quagga mussels, which live in the sediment (holds PCB concentrations), and gobies (eat the mussels, absorbing those PCBS) and now the fish eating lots of gobies, there is more bioavailability of PCBs, which is increasing PCB levels slightly, reversing a longstanding decline in PCB levels. So, browns and lakers especially are eating a lot of gobies and PCB levels are higher in those fish than fish not eating as many gobies.

I will solve the issue for everyone. The fish in the lake are contaminated, all of them so pull your boats and stay home. I will take care of the reducing the stock all by myself. No more combat fishing around the ditch ya hooo!

All kidding aside, some very good points made but simplified is the way I like it. Mankind has done its best to mess up the world. There isnt much on earth anymore that can't be found by someone to be bad for you then the next week someone else says it the best thing sense mashed taters and gravy. There are warning out there of the possible hazards it is up to the individual to decide on if they are going to abide or ignore. For those who can't decide for themselves, younger children, the parents need to decide. In my case we ate fish out of the lake when I was a kid, all family vacations, holidays, summers, etc. were spent in Northern Michigan fishing in the rivers, lakes, and big Lake. On the back side of 50 now I guess I know what has turned me into the grumpy old man I am, all those Lake Michigan fish dinners. I am a big supporter of properly cleaned fillets theory. But really anything without some sort of moderation is most likely going to be really bad for you? As BN said its ok to eat the fish but the drawn butter will kill ya. Well, next week it will be the new diet fad, the Atkins drawn butter diet. All right enough is enough I gotta go lick some lead paint. See ya on the lake.