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How To Fillet Fish

Now that you caught your fish, the next step is to clean or fillet them. The steps below show how to clean a fish without cutting through the rib cage. This helps speed up the process and also keeps your knife sharper longer as you're not using it to cut through so many ribs. I have used a walleye in this example but this technique will also work perch, bluegill, crappie, ext. Always use a very sharp when cleaning fish or this simple task will soon become a real job. Your knife should be as sharp as a razor blade.

As shown in photo cut the fish behind the gills to the backbone. Do not cut through the backbone. You'll want to angle the knife towards the head so get as much meat as possible.

Now work the knife along the top of the backbone as shown. Do not cut through the ribs of the fish, keep your knife just above the ribs.

Once you can feel with the tip of your knife that you are past the ribs push the knife all the way through the fish and work it out past the tail.

The cut along the ribs should look as shown to the left.

Photo of finished filet with skin still on.

With the fillet skin side down, pinch the fillet to your cutting board with your thumbnail and run your knife right over the top of the skin. Do this for a inch or so and then grab the fillet as shown. Keep the knife along the skin so you don't waste any of the fillets.

Now wash the fillets thoroughly with fresh water, and place in a bowl of water and ice. Then place in your refrigerator as shown or freeze. Prepared fresh fish will taste much better than frozen fish.