Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Channel cats/Bull head

CC Skinning:

Nail the CC through the head to a 2"x4" (some use a tree) about 3' long. Break off the spine on the dorsal fin and cut the rest of the fin off. Slice through the skin on each side from just in front of the dorsal fin, down and back toward the belly. There are some prominant bones jutting from the side that you will want to slice behond as you go down. Take a good pair of pilers and pull the skin off, starting from your incision and working toward the tail. I like to have running water available to rinse off the pliers; the mucous on the skin builds up and hampers getting a good grip.

Cleaning & Eating:

After skinning, I fillet. This works well on CC up to about 4 lbs; with larger fish there is a noticeable disparity in thickness between the rib area and the tail, which makes it hard to get the whole fillet cooked evenly.

I am going to have to reinvent the way my Grandpa used to cut very large CC into steaks (of uniform thickness) for cooking. These came out roughly "C" shaped; the main cut was perpendicular to the CC body length to get a cut about 3/4" thick.

Belly meat (which is quite substantial on larger CC) is indeed quite different - IMO tougher and stronger in flavor. I no longer remove it for cooking either. At least one fourm member is record, however, for preferring belly meat over the rest of the CC.

I like the tail meat behind the rib cage best.