Hey Nimrod,

Good to here from you. haven't been around for a while. I too mostly use a knife and not electric. What I liked about this is I have never seen anyone keep the belly meat when fileting. It always bothered me to just throw it away when fileting. I also did not know you could filet off the silver skin on the inside of the belly meat. We don't keep anything over 4-5 lbs anyway so the big ones don't have anything to worry about with us. Just snap a pic of the big girls and then they are on there way to make more eaters. I know it is sacrilege to most but we wont keep a flat head after it hits around 6-7 lbs. Never have cared for the taste or the texture of the big ones when we can catch all the 1-4 lbers we care to clean. I fish a tail race and the cats here gorge themselves on shad. After about 5 lbs they taste like a shad smells! yuck!

Hope you are well.