Odd Topic

Hey All,

I started catching Round Gobies in the Kawarthas last couple years while bluegill fishing for our family's annual fish fry.

I have kept them, ground them up in the blender and used them in the garden to help the flowers.

Our family goes to a cottage every year and its that time of year again.

I have read previously, others just feed them to wildlife etc.

Has anyone ever eaten them? Just curious if you can or not as these things are little b*****rds and strip your hooks clean in seconds the Tazmanian Devil with a ham leg.

My husband called the ministry a couple of years ago and was told to dispose of them without eating them. I guess because they’re bottom feeders?

any I have caught have been too small to bother with.

I would say not the reason - as ling, crayfish, lobsters etc are bottom feeders and are known by many to be great table fare

Gobies can contain massive amounts of botulism and still survive.

Several times what a human can endure from the reading I have done about it.

“ Zebra mussels are carriers of type E botulism, which the gobies help move further up the food chain”

So if we move further up the chain to game fish would the botulism become more concentrated. or would the botulism kill those game fish. A few years ago there were many dead sturgeon washed up on Wasaga Beach. As I recall, their death was attributed to botulism in Z mussels.

Could possibly be the cause.

I know when the dead zone in Lake Erie, caused by excess of phosphorus and nitrogen, gets bad the Gobies exacerbate the problem by building up so much botulism that they eventually die. When they die they float and birds eat them and then the birds die. Also while dying perch and other fish eat them and those fish die. The Zebra muscles are the origin of the botulism but the Gobies spread it far and wide and at high concentrations.

O.K.
Why are the Cormorants not floating around dead from eating too many Gobies?
?

Lots of whitefish with zebra muscles in their stomachs. Maybe Simcoe ZM has less botulism?

Kind of off topic but found one shoal in particular last weekend was infested with huge gobies on simcoe (6 inchers in guessin atleast ) and they were poppin out eggs when brought up. How many times do they spawn in a year ?

when i get one I just cut the head off and let it swim away

kind of what I also do

that is one fish i would never consider eating either

O.K.
Why are the Cormorants not floating around dead from eating too many Gobies?
?

I'm not sure how common it is but I have seen a few cormorants floating dead on the surface between BBP and Kempenfelt. In fact last year around this time I saw 3 in one day all within a couple of hundred yards from each other. When I saw the first one I thought maybe a boat or seadoo took it out but after seeing the other 2 fairly close to it I realized it was something else.
I'm not saying it was from eating Gobies but I feel like it was environmental in some way.

O.K.
Why are the Cormorants not floating around dead from eating too many Gobies?
?

That would be because of botulism isn’t always in high concentration or always present. When it is present, gobies concentrate it in the food chain.

Gobies are not safe to consume because the of the risk associated with the chance of high amounts of E botulism.

Cormorants don’t exclusively eat Gobies but yes Cormorants can and do die from high concentrations of Botulism.

Taken from Michigan Sea Grant.

“Loons, mergansers, long tail ducks, grebes, scaup, cormorants, and gulls are the bird species commonly affected by Type E botulism.”