Thread: fileting catfish

I don't agree with this but everyone has their own methods. I only keep belly meat off Flatheads. Big Blues and Channels tend to have fatty belly meat. I use old school manual fillet knives. Cut off sides , leave attached to carcess and use knife to fillet off skin. I have commercial fished with nets and guided Catfishermen . Guess I've cleaned my share with nothing but a manual fillet knife. I cut fillet up into steaks removing fat and red meat. Put in ziplock bags with enough water to push out all the air leaving as little water as possiable before freeze'n. Air is what hurts quality of food in the freezer. IMO

Hey Nimrod,

Good to here from you. haven't been around for a while. I too mostly use a knife and not electric. What I liked about this is I have never seen anyone keep the belly meat when fileting. It always bothered me to just throw it away when fileting. I also did not know you could filet off the silver skin on the inside of the belly meat. We don't keep anything over 4-5 lbs anyway so the big ones don't have anything to worry about with us. Just snap a pic of the big girls and then they are on there way to make more eaters. I know it is sacrilege to most but we wont keep a flat head after it hits around 6-7 lbs. Never have cared for the taste or the texture of the big ones when we can catch all the 1-4 lbers we care to clean. I fish a tail race and the cats here gorge themselves on shad. After about 5 lbs they taste like a shad smells! yuck!

Hope you are well.

Thanks , I've seen the bigger Catfish in the Arkansas River turn yuk (fatty and rank smelling like Shad). Here on Nimrod the big Flatheads are good but most I filleted have been netted in dead of winter while water really fresh. We don't have large numbers of Flatheads so I hate cleaning real small ones, but they are better. Channels I perfer ones under 3 lbs and Blues no bigger than 5 lbs.