To fillet or whole fry?

[fly_freebird90]

Just wondering how y'all clean your panfish. I have always whole fried them, thinking filleting wasted a lot of meat. Today I filleted a few, and now think its probably what I'll do from now on.

[M R Dux]

My Dad is in his 70s and a product of the depression. I used to get sick of his griping about me wasting the best part of a fish when I filleted them. I eventually told him to clean his own any way he wanted but I was going to fillet mine. My wife and I recently cooked some catfish that Dad had filleted when I had to leave to meet a taxidermy customer last year. They were not fit to eat due to the fact that he wouldn't trim the fillets because he didn't want to waste any meat. The entire bag of fish ended up wasted because we threw them in the garbage. I have never seen the benefit of scaling or skinning fish since most of what might be saved ends up not being fit to eat anyway,IMO.

[crazyboutcrappie]

You can have both ways : scale one side of the fish,cut off the headand gut the fish then fillet the other side taking off the skin.. batter and fry both...Tknight

[john h]

dont matter to me if it swims in grease ill eat it

[poppop]

I wish my dad was still alive to gripe to me....and cook me catfish....

[gabowman]

Fish certainly have a different taste as fish on-the-bone vrs. fillets. I have never tried filleting bream since most of what I catch and clean are about 6" long whole. When crappie fishing, unless I want a mess of the smaller ones on the bone, I wont keep anything unless it is filleting size since it's by far the easiest way to clean 'em. But ocassionally I do want to pick a few bones so the little guys are the ones I'm interested in that particular nite.

[wrwest]

I wish my dad was still alive to gripe to me....and cook me catfish....

I second that. Miss my dad too.

If the fish is small I cook it whole. If it is big it goes under the knife.

[PawPaw Gene]

Down here in the marshes it's hard to find slabs big enough to fillet. I like to scale, cut the heads off right behind the gills and clean out the body cavity. I then take my knife and cut on both sides of the dorsal on the shoulders down to the rib cage. Next is to dust in corn flour and seasoning and fry. On some of the larger fish I will do as Craztboutcrapie mentioned, fillet one side and fry the rest on the bone, especially when I have some of the little ones to share the meal with.

On the bluegills and other perch, I scale them, stand them belly up on the cleaning board, using my electric knife I cut right behind the vent all the way to the backbone then turn the blades toward the front of the fish and cut the rib cage off up to the head and then cut through the backbone and off with the head. This leaves only the main bones to worry about and the fins, which are meant to be eaten. I also slice down on each side of the dorsal fin.
"gene"

[Oscar73]

I caught 62 Saturday Morning. With numbers like that, you can't help but fillet.

Oscar

[Locator79]

Fillet the fish. Your not hardly going to lose any meat, also does not smell up the house as bad.