How do you prefer them?

Smoked

I prefer them as coon and mink bait

X2 and my mom would grind the fish and make fish sticks w/bread crumbs and seasoning. Very good!

smoked, but its been many years

Scored and deep fried

As a kid, the sucker run was a big deal! Families would bridge-hop on Sunday afternoons using trammel nets. The kids would go ahead of the men pulling the nets and chuck rocks and sticks in the holes and undercut banks to move the suckers from their daytime haunts. It was a big deal in the 50’s. If there were some families ahead of you parked at a bridge, you just jumped to another bridge up or downstream.

Ma only fried suckers along with the egg bags all fried in bacon grease and served with mashed potatoes. A lot of bones to pick let me tell you!

At night us kids would use Coleman gas lanterns and spear suckers in the creeks & riffles in the local rivers that I now trap beaver & mink on. Ma would chew may butt if I nicked the egg bags with the spear because the eggs would pop out hot and burn her arms while frying them!!!

Admittedly, I haven’t eaten a sucker since that time! I think if the property owners saw someone with a lantern in a creek today, they’d call the frigin Law on you!!!

Smoked and have ground the fillets and with seasoning and onion and made fish patties out of them.

The old people here called them "freshwater mullet" and would break your arm taking them to fry.

Down here in south Gawga..this^^^ is the preferred way too.

Canned.Canned Suckers was our "Tuna Fish" when I was growing up on the farm.Speared hundreds of them.

Smoked !

Like Walleye & Halibut !

Fillets canned - Great like tuna.
Fillets smoked and canned - Never met a smoked fish I didn't like.
Fillets through the grinder with some potato and onion seasoned to taste, made into patties and fried.
Fried roe sacks.

I've only eaten a sucker once. I fried it and found it okay, but not as good as sunfish or crappie.

Every year, when I see these posts, I am tempted to go to a creek I know, that gets many thousands of suckers, in some pools, in the Spring. The last time I was there during the run, I quickly caught dozens, which I chunked up for bait.

I don't like bones in canned salmon. How bad are the bones in canned suckers?

Keith

Good eating smoked. Just smoked canned 5 pints this morning.

Do you remove the bones after smoking, before canning?

Keith

We fillet ours off the ribs just like you would a walleye or Crappie. Once smoked, peel it off the skin, pack in jars and can it. The small bones will dissolve or at least get so soft that you don't even notice them. I hate eating fish with bones in them!

I personally take them out after just because I think it’s easier once there cooked and you get more meat.