Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose You HBG experts.. Are these ok?

What do you all think of this method? Does it waste meat? Looks like I'll be harvesting 200-300 this fall.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fjuxxauWP3A

Looks good to me. I think the whole key to fileting fish, any fish, is practice and a sharp knife. I'm sure there are some methods which are faster or easier, but experience at whichever method you use counts for a lot.

I think mine must be crossing with regular BG since I stocked regular BG and somehow got a few HBG in the mix. I doubt the few HBG I ended up with would multiply this much unless they were crossing with BG. Whatever they are, nearly all look like like HBG. I see some regular BG fry also. I've caught a few of the original HBG and they are up around 1 pound. Got a scale last week and hope to weight a few Saturday.

I have a friend who fillets YPerch the same way only he uses an electric knife. I know several guys who clean LkErie walleye that way. IMO that method is pretty fast but it wastes a little more meat than the standard fillet method. He loses some meat at the tail, some in removing the rib cage, and notice there is a narrow strip of belly meat lost. My fillets have a full flap of meat where the rib cage is. When you have lots of fish and larger fish you can afford to waste some of the meat.

As an old shop teacher, you never cut towards your hands as he does in that video. You will regret that method sooner or later.

kenc, i didn't like the looks of that either. I wouldn't like my son doing it that way. But of course nothing wrong would happen to me... Hehe..

Bill, thanks for the reply. Care to share your technique? Maybe it's been posted before.

Thanks
Jeff

I would like to change this from cleaning perch to cleaning Tilapia if u guy don't mind me asking. I clean fish different ways for different fish, sometimes cleaning where only meat is left for eating and sometimes leaving the skin on (after scraping the scales off). I do this sometimes with brim and crappie. So my question here is what is the preferred way to clean a Tilapia? I have read that if the stomach and or the intestinal juices touch the meat it will harm the flavor of the meat. Anyone? I have several methods of filleting, but the fastest is using elec knife down the spine and that would cut into the stomach and intestine area. This fall I may be cleaning a lot of these fish, so what are the best or fastest way to clean without harming the flavor of the fish?

Thanks

Tracy

No worries Tracy, from my personal experience Tilapia doesn't have much flavor so intestinal juices would be a big improvement!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.... hopefully you'll hear from those who've actually hacked into one.

Biggest problem in cleaning tilapia is if you cut the large green colored gall bladder. A 11"-13" tilapia can have a gall bladder as big as a quarter. This liquid can flavor the meat so I quickly rinse the fillet when the green juice gets on the fillet. If the fillet is rinsed quickly & cleanly I have never had an bad flavored fillet. Other than the gall bladder there are no more "intestinal juices" in tilapia than other fish such as bass or BG. Other fish also have gall bladders with yellowish fluid but it is not as plentiful as in tilapia.

Jeff asks: ""Bill, thanks for the reply. Care to share your technique? Maybe it's been posted before?""

This video for filleting fish is pretty good. It shows two versions of filleting - regular knife and electric knife. I basically use the regular knife method the charter captain uses. A couple notes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hkt3Q5y84U
A really sharp knife makes filleting look and be easy. Cutting the pin bones away from the top of the rib cage especially on larger fish of most all species will quickly dull the tip section of the fillet knife. Be prepared to resharpen your knife if you are cleaning numerous fish. Catfish do not have pin bones. The pin bones connect the fish's lateral line to the backbone allowing the fish to easily sense small vibrations in the water.

Note 1 - Notice there is a little more meat waste using the electric knife perch demo compared to the final fillet of perch with the regular knife. It is fairly tricky to cleanly remove a very thin layer of the rib cage especially if you are in a hurry cleaning lots of fish.

Note2 - For walleye from ponds and smaller lakes, you do not need to remove any red meat since Walleye from smaller waters have little if any red meat on the skin side of the fillet. For most all filleted fish, I always remove the pin bones but do not "zipper" the whole fillet as in the video for the walleye, IMO this full fillet length zippering is only needed for big lake WE. On most all fish including big lake walleye, basically all of the pin bone row stops at the end of the rib cage. I only cut a thin strip containing the pin bones from just above the rib cage.

Note3 - to hold the tail of the fillet to remove the skin I use a table fork to hold the tail tip of the fillet as I slice off the skin. My finger and nails are not the best for holding the small slippery tail tip of the fillet as the skin is sliced away.

Bill Cody, Thanks for the information on the Tilapia cleaning
Sparkie, I have several fillets of fish that are not fishy tasting, Halibut is fairly plain tasting with no fishy flavor and so are the Eldorado (Blunt nose dolphin), both are favored in in fine restaurants. I am guessing that the chef prefers to give it his personal flavoring. Maybe Tilapia falls in this same category? I don't know

Tracy

I use a townsend fish skinner for removing the rib cage. It works great and very quick. You just need to make sure you grab the big end of the rib cage and two twists done deal.

Cheers Don.

EDIT: Bill thanks for that video above. I didn't know about the zipper technique to remove that Y bone. Wonder if that would work for grass pike and musky?

Excuse my ignorance...but looked like he cleaned the fish without gutting them. Didn't think it was done that way.

Sean

Dono - Y bones in pike are different than the pin bones in most other fish. Pike family Y bones are very similar to the bundles of inter muscular bones in suckers where the bones lie in between the meat layers, 'flakes' or myomeres. Pin bones extending outward from the backbone toward the skin, are thought to be connected to the backbone; some fish specialists disagree.

Boburk- Filleting fish as in the video above gutting the fish is not necessary. Gutting a fish is usually done for fish that are left "whole" with back bone and ribs included. Fish cleaned "whole" can be skinned or scaled with skin left attached.

Guys I noticed that the pin bones are left in the perch. Are they so small no one takes them out? I have all year with a feel and cutting out a little strip.

Boburk the video has him leaving all the guts in the fish and trimming the meat off following the rib cage that holds all the goodies. I have cleaned all my large fish this way for years. The larger the rib bones the easier it is to do this way.

Mmmm walleye cheeks. They get their own pan.

Just getting back to freshwater after 50 years of salt but I clean all my fish similar to that unless they are big enough to steak. The exception is we scale them first as we like the skin attached to hold the flesh together in cooking. Scale then one cut down each side-cut out stomach bones - done. However I always cut away from my holding hand. That guy makes me nervous.

I'm going to watch the video, and get an electric knife.
Caught and cleaned 13 yesterday. I'm not good at filleting, that's for sure. I think I used a slightly different technique for each fish. Most were 8 to 9". It just doesn't seem like there are 1200 in there.
One other question. I was trying to determine sex of the YP, are the eggs like a white fat? I have cleaned a lot of LMB with yellow eggs, I was looking for eggs like those.

I finally watched the video. Very good!
I'm ordering the Rapela elec knife.. Cordless etc.
Thanks again for the link..

YP eggs are yellow too.

You may not see any eggs in the Missouri perch until November when the egg mass should be about as big as a dime or nickel. YP eggs in November of northern Great Lakes area perch will be the size of a quarter.

If I still have 1,000 of them in the pond in November, I'll still be catching them. I'll look for the egg mass then. In the mean time, how do you tell male from female?
Going to keep the feeder going until the water temp drops to 55.
Going to eat perch for the first time tonight. (Lightly spiced, and cooked on the grill.)