Cleaning Fish - Preparing Your Catch

Properly cleaning fish, and prepping it before
freezing, assures great tasting meals. Unfortunately,
a lot of fish are ruined because they aren’t cleaned
and cooled properly. A few minutes spent with your
catch in camp saves a lot of grief in your home kitchen.

Preparing fish is one of the easiest outdoor tasks. Yet, I’m always amazed at the number of fishermen, good fishermen, who don’t know how to clean their catch. They can catch them alright. But after that, they’re lost.

There are a number of techniques for cleaning fish. Your catch can be prepped as whole (in the round) fish, whole but headless, cut into steaks and chunks, or filleted—with the skin on or off as you choose.

The first step when cleaning fish is deciding whether or not the fish needs to be scaled. Some fish, such as trout and many salt-water species, have such small scales that they don’t have to be removed. Others have large, brittle scales that should be taken off.

There are scalers made for this purpose. They look like saw-toothed, often doubled-edged, knives. Lacking one of those, a teaspoon, or the back of your regular knife will do.

Start by trimming off all the fins, even with the body. Lay the fish down, head to your right (if you are right handed), and belly away from you. Starting at the tail, scrape the fish towards the head, so that the scales lift and pop off. Then flip the fish over, and do the other side.

This is just as messy as it sounds, so is best done outdoors.

If cleaning fish that you’re going to prep wholly or partially in the round, as well as those you intend filleting with the skin on, you should scale the fish.

To prepare a fish in the round, carefully slit the belly skin from the anal vent towards the gills. The innards will drop out more or less in one mass. Cut out the gills, where they attach to the roof of the mouth and the tongue.

There’s a bloodline on most fish at the top of the body cavity, just under the backbone. Remove it, either with a spoon, or, on smaller fish, just with your thumbnail. Wash out the body cavity well, assuring all the blood is removed.

For a head-off fish, slit the body and remove the entrails. Then cut off the head at about a 30 degree angle, just behind the gills, but with the knife as far forward on the head as is feasible. Scrape out the bloodline and wash the fish.

You can stop right there, or go on to butterfly the fish if you wish. Turn the headless fish on its back, and make a cut on either side of the backbone, all the way to the tail. Do not cut through the back skin! Then remove the backbone and open the fish flat. Remove any other bones---which can range merely from a rib cage, on species like bass and bluegill, to pin bones that protrude in several directions, as with trout.

Steaking lends itself to large fish. Start by prepping the fish in the round. Then cut off the head, but make a straight up and down cut, instead of the angled cut for headless whole fish. Cut uniform slices, about an inch thick, parallel to that first cut.

When cleaning fish, the classiest way to prepare fish steaks is to truss them first . That’s a little time consuming if you're cleaning fish in the field. You may want to wait until you’re home for that final step---another reason not to freeze them.

The difference between steaks and chunks is that chunks are random sized, whereas steaks are uniform. When cutting chunks, try to have equal thicknesses of fish, so that it cooks evenly.

Filleting is probably the commonest way of cleaning fish. Yet, it remains one that confuses people. I’ve never understood why, as it’s a simple task.

If you’re going to leave the skin on, first scale the fish if necessary. For skinless filets, skip that step.

Lay the fish on its side, head to the left, belly away from you. Make a diagonal cut, similar to the one used for beheading a fish, until you feel the backbone. Turn the filet knife in the cut until it’s practically flat, and, using the backbone as a guide, cut down the length of the fish, through the ribs and to the tail. For skinless filets do not cut through the skin at the tail.

Using that skin as a hinge, flip the filet over. The weight of the fish will help stabilize the filet. Starting at the tail, cut through the flesh to the skin, turn the knife flat, and slice the flesh off the skin. With just a little practice you’ll leave very little, of any, flesh behind. Turn the fish over and remove the filet from the other side.

Finally, remove the rib cage and any other bones.

Members of the pike family have to be handled differently, because there’s a row of “Y” bones down each flank.

Start with the fish on its belly. Make a slightly angled cut, even with the gills, down to the backbone. Using it as a guide, remove the top filet---just as you would with a normal side piece.

Look down at the fish, and you’ll see the Y bones, Cut off the filets on either side of them. You’ll be left with two tail sections that can be handled as if they were a regular fish.

On a large pike or muskie, the back meat is rather large, and you might want to split it in half lengthwise.

No matter which method of cleaning fish you use, the first time or two will be awkward. After that, it will become second nature to you.