Thanks for clearing that up, jpsdad. Those are small bass 6-8" only. I either remove the head and pan fry with or without flower or fillet and use the fillets for frying or other cooking. These small bass from my pond taste very good, even with the skin on, scales removed. The flesh is mild. It is not as good as trout, in my opinion, but still very good.
I'm glad you are enjoying them and yes I like them also. So there's a tip I wanted to share with you about deboning trout that I learned on the web researching grass pickerel. The subject angler of the article described how he would remove the bones ... pin bones and all. After pan frying, he would let them cool down a bit, remove the dorsal and anal fins, and then turn them belly up in one hand. It was then just a matter of gripping the backbone between his thumb and forefinger gently pulling the bones free of the fish. So I tried this with trout and to my amazement and my bride's delight ... I deboned the trout just like that. See the pic below.
![[Linked Image from forums.pondboss.com]](https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=17149&filename=Boneless%20Trout.jpg)
OK. So now I have an interest in understand if this method might be effect on LMB and Lepomis. Preliminary results are negative with BG but this may in part be because of the small sizes I harvest. I've been releasing the larger ones and keeping them between 4 and 5 1/2 inches. Meanwhile, doing my best to keep the LMB population up (something not so easy to do because others harvesting or not exercising care when they catch them). So I haven't tried it on LMB but the one's you are catching are just the right size to try this on. If you don't mind, could you try the method on one or two pan-fried LMB and let me know how it worked?
One thing I noticed is that the bass smell terrible when cleaning. Trout and other fish I clean do not have a smell like that at all
This isn't uncommon, especially in ponds. It's not limited to just Centrarchids and I can vouch that CC can have stinking guts too. When the fish is big enough, I often filet a fish without opening the cavity. I do this by starting in the middle of the fish (just behind the rib cage). The knife can be inserted parallel with the backbones all the way through. Then just filet to the end of the tail like one normally would. The second part involves rotating the fish with the back facing you. Cut down to the rib cage parallel with the dorsal fins and then separate the filet from the ribs. So the last step is to remove the skin. Especially, on large CC this is very nose friendly way to get the meat off.
Its also much easier than skinning them first.
