Sucker, But even if it is a chub they are both trash fish.
One man’s trash fish is another man’s bait.
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**Here is a “Chernobyl” chub from Starvation…before they all died out. Now that is a trash fish.
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**[inline “CHERNOBYL CHUB.jpg”]
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Your comment about eating a redhorse sucker piqued my interest. A google search brought this up:
Now you’re getting close to definitive fish identification techniques! I just read the article you linked: Yes, You Can Eat Sucker Fish. The Red Horse Sucker Fish, when properly prepared, tastes just like Bald Eagle.
The ones I ate were all lovely white flesh…and reasonably firm…with no “fishy” taste. The people I was staying with at the time made an annual event out of fishing for them in the spring and preparing them in several ways. The first…and simplest…was to fillet them, cross score the fillets to help cook the bones (yes, small bones) well enough to eat and then to flour and fry them. Delicious. They also slow baked some (pressure cooking works too) to soften the bones and then shredded the cooked meat to make fish croquettes. Also yummy.
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I love both smoked and pickled fish and had some of both…with suckers as the main ingredient. Great.
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**If you plug in “redhorse sucker fishing” in your search engine there is a grundle of articles on everything from the catching to the cooking.
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I found this link about suckers, I did not realise there were that many different types:
http://www.roughfish.com/suckers
I wonder if the DWR could have accidently got redhorse suckers mixed in with the Bluehead sucker when they stocked them in the Weber[:/].
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259927939_Status_and_Structure_of_Two_Populations_of_the_Bluehead_Sucker_Catostomus_discobolus_in_the_Weber_River_Utah
Anything is possible. If they got their planting stock from another state there could well have been some “bonus” immigrants.
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**Looking up the bluehead sucker shows it has more of a suckerlike mouth than the smaller one on the redhorse…in some pictures. In others it does not look too much unlike the fish in the OP picture.
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Same food group as a trout.
Hello all, First let me introduce myself. My Name is Chance Broderius and I am the Native Aquatics Biologist for the Division of Wildlife in the Northern Region. The fish in the OP’s picture is most definitely a Redhorse Sucker. If you made me narrow it down to a specific species, I would say it is a Shorthead Redhorse (Moxostoma macrolepidotum). OP if you have any other pictures of the fish in question I would love to see them to get a more definitive answer for you.
To address wiperhunter’s concerns that maybe we (DWR) accidentally stocked them with a stocking of Bluehead Sucker. That is wholly not possible, as the DWR has never stocked Bluehead sucker into the Weber River from another body of water. The Blueheads that occur in the Weber are native and a state species of concern. They are the reason that it is unlawful to keep or kill any non-game fish other than common carp in the Weber River. I can assure you that it would be highly unlikely that the DWR would stock any suckers in the Weber River that were not produced from stock taken from the Weber River so as to preserve the genetic integrity of the population.
I have attached a Redhorse ID cheatsheet as well as a picture of a Weber Bluehead. Enjoy!
Chance
Thank you for your professional enlightenment.
Hello Chance, unfortunately we only have the 2 pictures that I attached in the original post. After looking at the I.D cheat sheet I can say with almost 100% certainty that it is of the Shorthead Redhorse variety. The info I’ve provided is just about all that I can offer in regards to the catch, however, if you have any questions I am more than happy to provide you with as many details that I can.
To add to what TD said, in Missouri, when the Dogwoods bloom, everyone in the Ozarks would head to the local streams and harvest suckers, mostly Red Horse . They would be then dry salted or brined in barrels for later use. Considered a delicacy. In the early days here in Utah, the Pioneers mimicked the Indians and would gather on the banks of Provo River and harvest, JUNE SUCKERS ( no such thing, Mtn. Suckers) as they would run up the river to spawn. Again, they would dry salt or brine them in barrels for later use. The primary purpose of the old Madsen camp on the lower Provo was to harvest suckers for human consumption.
Welcome to the site Chance and thanks for the info. Are the Shorthead Redhorse native to Utah? Were you aware they were in the Weber drainage? According to these links they seems to be a sucker found more to the East of Utah:
Redhorse sucker are not native to Utah, they are an east-of-the-rockieskind of fish, and I was unaware of them in the Weber. For that reason I am hoping that this is a one of a kind of occurrence and not a new introduction. We’ve sampled every stretch of that river to determine the range of Bluehead sucker so we would have seen them if they were there before.
Also, not to discount the OP but neither of the pictures posted have any proof that they were for sure taken at echo (cropped and blurry). I’m kind of hoping that they are pulling our chains a little[;)] but if not and the fish truly was caught at echo we will be on the lookout for them in future sampling efforts and from there we will assess the situation.
Chance
Do they have this type of sucker in Montana? After reading your last reply, I decided to check this new members IP address and found that he is from Kalispell Montana. His first 6 post were from there but his last post was from Murray, Ut. I think you are correct and it is unlikely that fish came from Echo but I would never say never. Could be this new member is playing a game and violating our rules by posting a false report. Unless he has more proof, I’ll consider that the case. It could be that he caught a fish similar to that and found that fish on the interweb and posting it but whatever the case thank you for coming on BFT and helping us out with this head scratcher.
If addwater did make a fake post its one of the best posts i have read on here ever.LOL
Well seeing as those pictures were taken in 2013, I’d say this is fake news.
I guess you never read this post then:
http://www.bigfishtackle.com/cgi-bin/gforum/gforum.cgi?post=512301;search_string=strawberry;#512301
It is looking more like this may be a “fake news” post, but I had indicated earlier that I had caught “horse suckers” in the drainage in question sometime in the past and I figured I would share the details of that, such as they are.
In the mid 1970’s, my dad and I caught an unusual (to me) sucker out of a certain hole in the middle Weber outside of Wanship. Dad called them “horse suckers”. He wasn’t a biologist and I was 10-11 years old. I remember the fish being reddish, but don’t recall details. We caught one there 2 years in a row. I had since forgotten about it until this thread. I last fished this reach about 12 years ago and the hole is still there, albeit smaller.
If there is any substance to the original post, and you would like to check the area I am referring to, I would be happy to take you there. (It is in a public access stretch still.) If time permits, I would also be interested in helping with the bluehead project in any other way as well.
Thanks for the input on this thread.
Definately a fake report. A reverse image search showed the same photo was posted on the roughfish site in 2014.