Thread: whats eating sized?

I agree illinoisgiller,the taste is very different and better.Try scaling and then fillet your catch.Leave the skin on and you should be able to see the grub's.I think the skin is where the flavor come's from.

hmm, the way ive been taught to fillet the bones are still in the fish, unless you mean the spinal column? but the last 5 inch bluegill i tried to fillet came out with about a silver dollar sized fillet which i guess is eating size as long as i can find a way to take the skin off, my main problem with fish is getting the skin off, once i do that i can acctually fry my catches instead of steaming them

Bone's still in the fish here too.Just talking about leaving the skin on for flavor.If you were filleting your fish you should'nt have any skin unless you wanted it left there.Are you sure you know how to fillet a fish?If not just ask and we will try to help.

I've been fileting fish since I was ten years old and I can filet any size. I use to say I could filet a shiner if I had too LOL. These days I try not to filet anything smaller than a 7 inch Bluegill and a 8 inch Sacalait (Crappie). It just makes fileting go a lot faster. If you filet smaller fish you have to really slow down and be very careful of blade placement. I only use an electric knife (Black & Decker) or (General Electric) they hold up better than MisterTwister and American Angler. The gears are better and I've cleaned small Bluegills as well as 20# Snapper with them. The trick to cleaning small bluegills is to go slow and let the knife do the work and pay close attention to blade position but most of all they have to be very cold but not frozen. If the fish are not cold enough you will ruin them. The meat will not come away from the spine properly and you will waste meat. The filets are small but they are the tastiest you will ever eat. Check out my recipe marked Zatarains in the Recipe section of the site. I saw a few in there I will have to try this weekend. Good Luck and Good Fishing!

I too use a 12V rapala and generally clean 40 - 100 gills at a time. Anything under 5" goes back. Percy priest is over run with small gills so it doesn't hurt anything to clean them out. Maybe someday they will begin to grow larger as I thin them out. My family prefers the small boneless filets. We like to deep fry in a mix of half Golden dipped for fish and half Golden dipped cajin for fish. Makes them a little spicy but not to much so.

I like your method of half one way and half the other.I would suggest keeping those 5in bluegill and help reduce that population even further.If I did'nt thank you aboard,welcome.

For all of you who enjoy scaling your fish and frying them whole with bones and fins... I saw a post some where on here a while back about a wire cage that you put your fish in as you catch them. You drag it behind your boat and it scales your fish for you. I never actually seen one in person, but I would imagine that'd be a pretty nice item to have and save a lot of cleaning time.

Anybody ever used one of these?

I responded to that post,let me see if I can find it.I want one also.