wormy bass

Question
Hello. I am from Belleville, Ontario and a huge fan of fishing. When I was younger my dad and I used to fish up at Elliot lake. We would catch lake trout, large mouth and small mouth bass. We always took a few back to the cottage to clean up to eat. I never remember having a problem with worms in my bass from my younger fishing years. They were always delectable eating.
A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I went fishing at a quarry down around the Belleville area where we live. Almost every cast we were pulling in a decent sized small mouth. By the end of the day we choose a few to take home to clean up and have for dinner. Once home I got to cleaning them and I found little white worms... So small you could barely see them in the meat but, all through the fish. I was extremely upset... And creeped out... Ew. They looked like little white leeches. They had the flat bodied that a leech would. But they were maybe half a cm long, if that.
The next day I was talking to a friend of mine who is a very avid fisherman and he said that all bass this time of year are wormy.
We have caught bass since but haven't taken any home because of this and not wanting to waste if they did end up being wormy.
I have looked all over the internet for a solid answer regarding if the worms were due to location or time of year etc and there seems to be a huge number of different views on the matter. I was wondering if you would be able to shed some light on this issue for me. Are all bass wormy at a certain time of year? If so what time of year are they good to eat? Or is it more our location where maybe our waters aren't as clean?

If you have any insight on this I would love to hear it!! Thank you, Melissa.

Answer
Melissa, I refused to answer this question because it was far out of my
expertise but I might know where you could get an answer.  Send a message
to the e-mail address and ask him if he could put you in contact with a
friend of his who likely would know since his friend is a state fisherman
with a college degree in fish biology.  I can't even remember his name
but I am sure he could put you on the path to answering your question.
the E-mail address is.  [email protected]

Come to think Of it  when we used to go to Northern Minnesota every
summer nobody would eat the yellow perch because they were  wormy.  I
never knew of bass having them so we ate them.  Later I found the bass
also got wormy late in summer.

JackfromSeminole