Went fishing in our pond for the first time this year with our neighbors, and started reeling them in! 2 13 perch, a few 11s and 3 10s. All nice shapes. Not overly fat, but looking good! Also a 10 inch black crappie. She came out of the pond iridescent blueish. What a pretty fish!
Currently getting ready to filet them up, so this will be our first fish fry from our pond tomorrow.
Best fishingmwe have ever had out of the pond!

I put over a hundred 3" to 4" perch in my pond a couple of months ago and haven't seen one yet. I feed every day but they never show up with the other fish. However my pond is so rich in food sources that I don't worry about them. But it will be exciting when I finally do see one.

That's great! A buddy brought a couple young kids down to my place yesterday to educate the rainbows a bit. They each got about ten but a half dozen perch were caught also. Hadn't seen much of them since they went in but they were looking healthy. Congrats of your first fry! Nothing better than fresh perch!

I must be doing something wrong. Harveting the meat out of them was quite difficult, messy, and didn't yield as much as hoped. I believe I know the technique, but lack of a 1 on 1 session or experience just about made me give up. Hopefully wont be choking down bones today.

What's the problem? The pin bones?

I found great videos on YouTube, regarding filleting a perch. I'm pretty quick now, after doing about 60-70. I did buy a rapella rechargeable, elec filet knife, and it sure makes it quicker. (Amazon)
I do end up with a few bones in some of the filets, but less than 25%. Not sure why some have them, and not others.
Also, I'd never had fresh perch before. It's now our favorite fish. (Good thing, as I think I may have a few too many in my small pond.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjTlFwQb7D0

Ok really small ones you clean them up like this above. You are left with the rib cage still intact but meat flakes off when cooked.


On the larger ones I clean them up like you normally would and use a townsend fish skinner to spin the rib cage out. This yelds the best meat from the perch.

I am the most picky person when it comes to fish bones and my family loves this about me. I have built up a very good trust in my skinning abilitys from my family they never worry about the fish I clean. I have to hand it all to the townsend skinner. They don't make them any more and mine is from 1957. You can find them on Ebay.

Cheers Don.

This perch was as big as my son. Just hit 13"s

Don, what's with the waders?? It looks dry there.

Wow, one thing is clear, I didn't sharpen my knife well enough. My spanking new filet knife needs some more work. I do like that first method, sort of Predator style... I'll try that next time.

Yum! Worth the trouble.

I recently started a thread on fillet knife sharpeners cause a dull knife is a real problem for me as well. The guys posted some good info. I no longer have dull knives!

You might find it interesting.

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=444496

DonoBBD,
You never stop learning on this forum. I never heard of a Townsend skinner. A little searching and on youtube I found this video. At the end they show the mounted skinner which probably makes it even easier to use than the handheld ones I found on ebay.

At the 2 minute mark they describe how they made their own filet knife using an old steel butter knife. Bill D, your new fish knife sharpening skills will come in handy. Now you can go to an estate sale and ask if they have any old steel butter knives

It shows what appears to be the same perch fillet technique but they do a different order (cut head off first, take dorsal fin out second, etc)

Great stuff!!

I get out your way occasionally, be glad to walk you through a couple if you'd like. Pretty sure I've averaged over a thousand a year for the past forty years or so and have shown quite a few guys the ropes over that time. I'll let a three year old munch my fillets with no concern of hitting a bone ever. Got these in a bit over an hour or so a couple years back... Quite the fire drill! I've been blessed with many opportunities to work through piles like this. Get the technique down after awhile. We were anchored up on a huge school here, I remember we were in 42 fow, but the fish finder read 29 feet most of the time because the school was so dense. If you look close you'll see their stomach coming out of the mouth of many of these due to coming up quickly from deep water. Fortunately they were all about the same size. I can average a couple a minute when need be.

Hollywood,

LOL! Unfortunately, my new found skill is dragging a blade thru a machine...

I can't imagine how long it would take me to fillet a pile of perch like that! You should make a video of your technique and post it!

esshup, yes it is dry but my boy in the picture is only 14 bt 6'1" and 220. He tends to find him self in the water all the time. He was in the near creek bed finding some worms to fish with and the rubber boots are never tall enough.

The worst part is all three of my boys I look up to. Me at 5'10" is the short guy in the house.

Cheers Don.

P.S. I think I might mount my townsend too. Add a longer crank to it as well. The little paddle can be a pain on the fingers. I don't use it to take the skin off just the rib bones out. I like to leave the end on at the tale and flip the filet over then run the knife through to take the skin off.

Dono, so if the filet is done, you took the skin off with the filet knife, then how do you feed the fillet through the townsend to get rib bones out? How does it not shred up the filet?

The rib bones are cut clean through from the back bone when filleting like you would do with most fish and remove the skin the same way you would with a filleting knife. I start the townsend on the large ends of the rib bone that is left in the filet at the head end. The blade of the townsend under the rib bone wheel up and start cranking. It will pull all the rib bones out with little to no waste at all.

Then I feel for that pin bone strip and cut them out with my filleting knife to get the perch pants.

I will see if I can do a little video of pulling the rib bones out of the perch we do up this weekend for mothers day.

Cheers Don.