[carpio]

Freshwater drum are excellent blackened, but if you freeze the meat it is ruined.

Tracker,

I have eaten vast amounts of fresh water drum in my long career of fresh water fish eating. I usually only eat the smaller ones of say 3-4 ponds or less. Often I filet them and freeze the filets in plastic baggies of water for some time prior to eating them.

I handle all fish very carefully and all suffer a little bit from freezing but I don't notice fresh water Drum to be any more delicate than others in this respect.

Have you actually frozen the Drum yourself (properly) and then tried them? Or have you just eaten some that were frozen by someone perhaps less careful than yourself?

Just curious because I think I am pretty picky and I don't notice any harm from freezing Drum. While on the other hand I almost never freeze Carp because I have had very bad luck with the ill effects of freezing on them.

Carpio

[carptracker]

Carpio - thanks very much for the response. I'm very interested in your reply. I will give freezing drum another try. But my two attempts at freezing freshwater drum have not met with success. Neither of those attempts were frozen in water. I usually only freeze fish in water if I expect to keep the meat more than two or three weeks. I usually consider the water a defense against freezer burn, which is not a problem with short term freezing. And I think sometimes fish that is frozen with more than a thin film of water does not taste as good to me, or cook as well, because it becomes water-logged and leaches out some of the flavor. But the drum had another problem. I (surprisingly) found the frozen and then thawed drum to be tough as boot leather. The stuff was even hard to cut. So I have not frozen drum since. It is a funny thing, because most fish, especially some fish in the drum family (especialy the trout-form drums, like silver seatrout and sand seatrout) become extremely soft if frozen. The bootleather thing has only happened to me with freshwater drum, but it has happened twice. Nevertheless, my experiences with fresh freshwater drum have been every bit as good as its saltwater cousin the redfish. Blackened drum with Paul Prudhomme's blackened redfish seasoning is absolutely great.