How do you clean sunfish - buegill

TinBoats.net

Help Support TinBoats.net:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Dman23

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 24, 2012
Messages
123
Reaction score
2
Sometimes when we are bored and the walleye arent hitting we go to an easy place to hit a good 50 sunnies. Some of them in a couple spots i know are very nice plate sized. But i dunno they seam more trouble then they are worth and by the time i get done with them my knife is dull and i dont get what i should out of them. How do you clean them?
 
I know some people like to cut the head off, gut them, & scale them but that leaves the bones. Though it might not be the fastest way, I almost always fillet mine just like you would sac-au-lait. They have to be nice sized bluegill but it's worth it. Hope this helps!
 
for brim and small croppie i scale and head then trim out the anus can do fish in under a minute.
 
If you're filleting bream, you're wasting just as much meat as you're getting off.

Cut off the head, gut 'em, scale 'em, whole fry 'em. Eat 'em standing up and wipe the grease on your pants. Only beverage permissible is a coldbeer.

Once they're cooked, grab the backbone and with it comes the rest of the bones.
 
I scale them with a plastic scaler and then fillet them off the bone with a very sharp flexible 12" filleting knife, then fillet out the rib bones. Takes about a minute a fish. Another tip I put all the waste in a freezer bag and throw it in the freezer in my garage refrigerator. Then put it out on trash day.
 
FishinsMyLife said:
If you're filleting bream, you're wasting just as much meat as you're getting off.

Cut off the head, gut 'em, scale 'em, whole fry 'em. Eat 'em standing up and wipe the grease on your pants. Only beverage permissible is a coldbeer.

Once they're cooked, grab the backbone and with it comes the rest of the bones.

I do agree that there is some waste with filleting any small fish, but I just don't like messing with the bones when eating. JMHO

and oh yes cold beer is the only drink for a fish fry :D
 
Okay i was doing them like a crappy/walleye before. Maybe i just need more practice. Good thing the limit is like 20-30! Lol. I dont know if i would have it in me to scale, and the fiance is a zero bones if you want me to eat it kind of girl.
 
I use both methods for cleaning and enjoy eating them whole or filet. When I scale them, I use a large spoon (table spoon or larger) to scrape the scales off. You'll be surprised at how well the edge of a spoon will get the scales off and there's no danger of cutting or sticking yourself with a sharp object.

This batch of 100 took my brother and me a little over an hour to clean, but we took a couple of short breaks during for refreshments. =P~

377ce5fc.jpg
 
Last weekend, while I was sitting on my skinny old butt, patching holes, or bucking rivets, or some darned thing...a neighbor, sometimes hunting friend, drove up and announced the crappies were biting.

He looked at (but did not admire) my work, then took out a plastic bag and opened his cooler, filling the bag with about 30 of them. They were just keeper size...just. About the size of my open hand. A pain to fillet, but that night, dinner was three frying-pansfull of crappie meat, cooked in margarine with salt and pepper. Best knife for me is a very old bread knife, carbon steel, sharp as hell, and as flexible as a blade can be and still have structural integrity.

I've got the rest in the freezer, just didn't have the energy to do them all that night.
 

Latest posts

Top