Percy Priest Bluegills 5/27/11

[fisher01]

Went back again today, same time, same place, same jig, same result.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the fish were still there, despite the cooler temperatures today. Ended up keeping 30 bluegills, in about an hour of fishing. Went the sun started to show, the bite turned off.

Would like to go back this weekend, with the warmer temperatures, but with all the boaters out there, wading/bank fishing can be difficult at times.

[Fishmanjoe]

Nice job, I imagine cleaning them is a lot more of a job than catching them was.

[bd-]

I don't know if you've ever read any of Pat McManus's stories - he used to write "The Last Laugh" for Outdoor Life. Maybe he still does; I haven't read that magazine in a while.

Anyway, Pat McManus had a story many years ago about cleaning bluegills, and how "there's no such thing as too many bluegills" when you're catching them, but then you go to clean them and their numbers extend to infinity. You keep taking them out of the cooler, and cleaning, and cleaning, and cleaning, and then you look in, and there's just as many $&*"@ bluegill in there as there were when you started.

In the story, he was sitting in front of a pile of bluegills late into the night, but the number kept growing. At the start of the story he's cleaning a hundred bluegills, then it's a thousand, and then by the end he's still cleaning bluegills, but now he's got a pile of a million of them and he's going crazy because he's never going to get done.

I've had many nights where I've felt exactly like McManus described in his story.

bd

[fisher01]

Great story Bd! Cleaning that many bluegills does get tiresome. Here's the way I clean all my fish. No matter what I keep, bluegill, catfish, crappie, trout, yellow stripe, etc. all are filleted boneless and skinless.

When I keep that many fish, I immediately place them in cooler with ice.
After I have 20 fillets done, I then wash/rinse each one and inspect them to make sure all bones are removed. Each fillet is then layed out and dried with paper towels. Then I will package them in sets of 10 or 20 in freezer bags. Sometimes I'll use the vacuum seal packages or will vacuum seal them the next day. Usually from start to finish which includes all cleanup, I can process about 25-30 per hour.

[chaseasl]

looks like a blast

[Fishmanjoe]

Great story Bd! Cleaning that many bluegills does get tiresome. Here's the way I clean all my fish. No matter what I keep, bluegill, catfish, crappie, trout, yellow stripe, etc. all are filleted boneless and skinless.

When I keep that many fish, I immediately place them in cooler with ice.
After I have 20 fillets done, I then wash/rinse each one and inspect them to make sure all bones are removed. Each fillet is then layed out and dried with paper towels. Then I will package them in sets of 10 or 20 in freezer bags. Sometimes I'll use the vacuum seal packages or will vacuum seal them the next day. Usually from start to finish which includes all cleanup, I can process about 25-30 per hour.

Good system.

[fisher01]

Thanks Fishmanjoe.

When I go out fishing, I place any fish I'm keeping in a large fish basket, keeping them alive till their placed into the cooler. The reason I process 10-20 fillets at a time is to get as many as possible into the freezer as quickly as I can. I've be doing this for 20+ years and it always has worked well keeping the fillets fresh.

[bd-]

I don't think I've ever timed myself to see how many bluegills I can filet in an hour. Maybe I'll check next time I keep a cooler full.

I agree with you on fileting all the fish I catch - even bluegill and trout. It's just so much easier to deal with the bones when cleaning the fish instead of trying to pick them out on the plate.

I don't filet bluegills skinless though. I just scale them with a butter knife and then filet them. I do crappie the same way. The skin doesn't give any bad flavor. I will take the skin off catfish or white/yellow bass because it has a strong flavor.

bd

[fisher01]

I have found its faster for me to skin them verses taking the scales off and leaving the skins on. In filleting, I make a slice next to gill plate, then slide knife down backbone all the way to tail, leaving fillet attached to tail. Then flip fillet over and run knife against the underside of skin, all the way down fillet. Out comes a fillet skinless but still has rib cage attached. Then I just run knife behind rib cage bones and you have a boneless, skinless fillet. I do the same for the other side. Years, ago I use to scale them and leave the skins on, but this way is just quicker for me.

[bd-]

I can scale one pretty fast, but you're right that it probably takes longer. I used to trim the skin off, but with smaller bluegills the skin is so thin that every once in awhile I'd accidentally cut through the skin halfway down the fillet. Then it's a major pain to remove the scales and/or skin from the remaining part.

I also filet slightly differently. I cut the slice by the gill plate, but then I start the tip of the knife at the back of the dorsal fin and cut a "guide" incision forward along the backbone and along the top of the ribcage. Then I go back to the gillplate incision and do what you do, cutting along the backbone to the tail. Again, it takes a little longer, but I find that starting the incision along the dorsal first ensures that I don't cut through the backbone on small fish when I'm cutting the ribcage, and it also keeps the knife closer to the backbone so there isn't any waste meat. An error where your knife strays 1/8" from the backbone is hardly noticeable on a big fish, but on a bluegill or yellow bass that's a major loss of meat.

Once the filets are done on a bluegill or yellow bass, they're slightly larger than a jumbo shrimp - a perfect "bite size" filet to fry up for a great meal with hushpuppies and cole slaw.

bd