Bluegills with worms??


pointing_dogs_rule

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Hey guys:

I have gotten back into the ice fishing habit. Lots of fun catching those bluegills.

They come from a very large farm pond (lake). Friends showed me how to fillet them and noted that some may have worms (they pointed them out). They fry the fish and ingore the little white worms.

What are they and if I fry them on my George Foreman (fryed very well) should I be concerned. I personally don't mind the little extra protein.

Thanks

the dog

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The yellow grub, Clinostomum complanatum, (formerly known as C. marginatum), is a parasitic fluke that requires snails and fish eating birds to complete it's complex life cycle.

The life cycle of black and white grubs is essentially the same. Grubs begin life as eggs released from an adult fluke living attached by a sucker, to the throat of a fish eating bird, commonly, a great blue heron. Eggs hatch into a free swimming stage called a mericidium.

Mericidium will die if they do not find a Heliosoma spp. snail (first intermediate host) within a few hours. When contact is made with the snail, the mericidium burrows into the digestive gland or gonads. Mericidium undergo developmental changes to produce sporocysts.

Sporocysts have no digestive system, a characteristic that differentiates them from the redia, the next developmental stage. Germinal cells in the sporocyst produce many redia that continue to migrate about digestive gland. The redia produces the cercarial stage of the grub.

Cercaria differ structurally from adults only by size, addition of a tail and other changes necessary to reach the fish (second intermediate host). Free - swimming cercaria leave the snail through the mantle cavity. On contacting a host fish the cercaria burrow under it's skin and gradually form a thick walled cyst or "grub" that is readily visible when the fish is examined. The grub is the metacercarial stage of the adult fluke. Fish respond to some metacercaria by surrounding it with pigment. This gives the black grub it's distinctive color.

The encysted grub is freed when a fish eating bird captures and swallows an infested fish. A combination of temperature, digestive juices and carbon dioxide in the stomach of the bird activate the grub and digest the cyst wall. On release from the cyst, the grub migrates up the esophagus and attaches itself to the throat or mouth cavity.

C'mon doc---don't remember studying Clinostomum complanatum in parasitology:D

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