Blood on fillets

My filets have never been water logged. That is why I do it the way I do. The only time I have seen water logged filets is when people try thawwing them out quickly by taking them out of the bags or containers and put them in water. I thaw mine out by simply just putting them in the fridge. I dont put any extra water in them when I freeze them either. If you dont cool the meat quickly then they do seem to get somewhat soft. Like they say, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

That's an awesome idea actually Pgwilliamson. I know my freezer could use the extra space, at times I have huge frozen circles of crappie sitting in my freezer cause I put the crappie in a freezer bag full of water and put the bag in a bowl and set it in the freezer .....

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Originally Posted by purplelab

The way I eliminate blood on the filleted meat when I'm cleaning crappie is you cut underneath the gills(throat area) until you find that artery and cut it. You'll know you cut it when the blood starts flowing out. Let them "drain" about 10 minutes. Then fillet as usual. You get no blood on the meat that's usually hard to wash off. I do this with any fish I keep.

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I was just logging on to post about the same thing. I usually bleed them out the same way, after spiking them in the brain to kill them humanely.

Recently, the last couple times I went fishing I caught more fish than I had time to clean and eat. There's a local business that buys fish here, and I brought him my crappie, having heard that you can get a good price. It turns out he brings them to New York City, where they are sold whole. He asked me not to cut the gills anymore because they don't look as good whole that way.

So today when I fished, I didn't bleed them out. When I was done, I decided to keep them after all. When I cleaned them, the fillets were sure enough bloody! It definitely took more work to clean off the blood than it did to bleed them out as I caught them.

In the end they tasted just fine, but I'll definitely keep bleeding them out.

I filet my crappie. Then put them in a bowl of salt water and keep them in the refrigerator over night , before I bag them up and put in the freezer. The salt draws the blood out. Been doing it for years.

X2 ^^^

I never have problems with blood when filleting.