As I was cleaning a fish, I noticed tiny white worms in the fillet. What are these and is the fish still okay to eat?
What you are seeing sounds like yellow grubs. Yellow grubs are worm parasites that spend part of their life cycle in fish. The adult grub lives in a heron’s mouth. They lay eggs in the saliva which wash out of the birds mouth as it feeds. Upon emerging from the water, the eggs hatch and the larvae must invade the flesh of a particular type of snail of the genus Helisoma. If these snails are not present in the lake, the life cycle is broken. If this genus of snail is present, the larvae invade its flesh and multiply themselves manyfold. When they mature, they burst out of the snail and penetrate the fish’s skin and become encysted in the muscle. This encysted form may be white or yellow and 1/8 to 1/4 inch long. When teased out of its cyst, it wiggles, squirms and crawls about. The large size and active behavior of this grub can shock anglers when they fillet an infected fish. The life cycle is completed when the fish containing these encysted grubs is eaten by a feeding heron. Dissolve
