Thread: Bream fillets...

Fish skin isn't going to hurt you. You will be fine eating it. Its a lot easier to skin them with a fillet knife than scale them though.

If you scale it you are fine. I fillet them out of the skin though. Takes practice but worth it.

The Skin on bream is not like Black Bass which is something that makes them taste horrible. With the Bream it's still taste great with skin on.

I never fillet my fish with the skin on but there is quite a following that does. The only reason that I don't is due to pure lazyness lol . One of the fellas that goes on a spring fishing trip with us always leaves the skin on because he claims it add to the flavor.
If you wish to leave it on due to problems filleting it off, just go catch a bunch of small ones and just practice. I fully fillet bluegill at 2 per minuit with a Rapalla 12 v w/ the smallest blades. Sure seemed clumsy when I started a few thousand ago. Mike

If you can picture this – as you fillet from front to tail – stop just before cutting off at the tail and flop the fillet over 180 degrees until it covers the tail – meat side will be facing up. Then skip about ¼ inch and cut through the meat to the skin and separate the meat from the skin.
When you pick the carcass up by the tail it looks like a skinny meatless fish, all skin and scale still there, but the meat along the back and behind the ribs is gone. No blood and no bones disturbed.
Some folks cut through the rib cage but I find that too messy on crappie and bass.

This is a video on how to fillet fish.

Works for Bluegill too. To answer your question, if you scaled it, the skin won't hurt you.

CLEANING CRAPPIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqCoph-C6Jo

How To Filet A Crappie, Catfish, and Walleye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQXIbS5Y-Qs

old ship

With bream, there's no problem with leaving scaled skin on and eating it - it actually adds a little extra flavor. I've gone to cutting fillets off the skin simply because it is quicker and cleaner (don't have scales everywhere).

Growing up, we didn't even fillet bream - we would simply scale them, gut them, cut off the heads and cut out the fins (except the tail). Roll them in a mix of flour, salt& pepper, then pan-fry in butter. YUMMY!!!!!

When my kids were little, I worried about them choking on bones, so I started to fillet my catch - and now that I've been doing it for a long time, it's just quicker. I can fillet/skin a bream in under a minute with an old fashioned fillet knife (the kind that doesn't use any sort of electricity), where I'd spend at least that long scraping scales off. When I've got a mess of fish to clean, I just want to get done as quick as I can - that means fillet & skin them.

skin wont hurt u a bit. but its extra work to scale them, get a good fillet knife 1 w/ a very flexable blade and go like u aint got good sence. it takes a lil bit of patience and practice but in no time u will be a knife weilding wizard