Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Should begin to Harvest my Fish?

The hard part to cleaning a catfish is skinning it. This is greatly expedited by the use of a hammer, nail (double-headed form nail works very well), a 2"x4" board about 3 feet long, and a pair of pliers.

-Nail the CC to the board thru the head
-Cut thru the back spines on the dorsal fin, then break the big front spine of with the pliers
-Make an incision down each side of the CC, starting in the meat behind the head and following the meat down each side most of the way to the belly
-Pull the skin off the CC with the pliers, front to back. Hard for me to get it off in less than 4-5 pieces, but the board the CC is nailed to lets you brace the fish against your leg.
-Once the skin is off, the CC can be filleted similar to a BG or LMB (I find the CC much easier to fillet, except for the skinning, as there are no secondary "shortribs" like Centrarchids have, and the bones are thick enough that the knife easily follows them instead of cutting thru them)
-The belly meat, which becomes a decent sized piece of meat in CC over 3 or 4 pounds, may be included on the fillets or cut off as desired. My family doesn't really like CC belly meat, but some PMs here think it's the best part. It is firmer/tougher than the tail meat.

The more traditional variation of skinning involves nailing the head of the CC to a tree.

After rinsing the fillets, I like to soak them in water for about a day to help get the blood out. Filleting works well for CC up to about 6 pounds; heavier than that the fillets have enough thickness variation from front to back that even cooking is a little more difficult. My Grandpa used to cut really big CC into steaks, similar in shape to salmon steaks, but I haven't played around with this yet. Maybe next year with bigger CC.

I've never looked at a CC under flo(rescent ?) light.

P.S. I'm sure there are other good methods of cleaning CC, which we will hopefully hear about.