Bone Sunfish

Why is it that the kinds of fish that taste better are harder to catch and cost more to buy?

for example, shad and croaker taste much better and are larger/have more flesh and less bones than the sunfish/catfish which are typically caught in the potomac. Catfish can get big sometimes, but they definitely do not taste as good as shad or croaker. And although it is possible to catch shad and croaker in the potomac, it very rarely happens. There were also once very large sturgeon fish that occupied the potomac which I am sure tasted just as great, but are now extinct from the potomac. Likewise, black drum, which are exceptionally large, taste good and reach a high price at the wharf, can be caught in the Chesapeake Bay, but you rarely catch any, and you can only keep 1 per day. So why is it that you rarely catch these fish? Is it because they have been overfished since they taste better/are larger?

A couple of reasons. One is basic economics: the seller will charge more for something if he can get a higher price for it. So if you have 2 fish which are roughly equal in difficulty to catch, but one tastes better, the price will be higher.

The other is that, due to overfishing, the better tasting (= more profitable) fish are now much less numerous, which makes them harder to catch. Which in turn allows the fish sellers to charge even more for them.

Knife review: a big and a small “sunfish” knife by Rough Rider