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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.
I put my crappie catch on ice for a day making sure to drain the water off as the ice melts. After a day on a bed of ice cleaning is bloodless.
Find it quicker to take a pair of needlenose plyers grab ahold of few gills and give them a twist get the blood flowing in a hurry!
Usually do not have trouble with blood on crappie fillets. Try when making your first cut behind the gill plate flap and the pectoral fin do not go so deep so that it draws blood. If you don't go deep the fillet should be bloodless. I have heard of some fishermen that cut the tail of the crappie so that they bleed out quickly, but I only do that with catfish. (hanging the fish tail down so that it bleeds out through the tail) When filleting crappie, I do not cut through the rib cage, that could be a reason the fillets have little or no blood in or on them. I just work down the spine and the rib cage and toward the tail to finish.
Husker
If you really want your fish to have the best flavor here's what u do: in your ice chest add a lot of ice, add some water to make a slush and add a lot of salt.. This brings the water temp down around 32, then put the fish in as you catch them. What this does is sets up hypothermia in the live fish and the blood leaves the meat and goes into its organs. This method is how they do for tuna that is going to be sushi . Been doing this for years and it really makes a diff, in how the fish tastes... Try it and pass it on.
Drop fillets straight in cold water and blood rinses off easy. I don't want mine sitting getting hot while I'm filleting the rest.
What I do is when fileting my fish is when I take the meat off the fish I put them in a tub of water until I have all the fish done then get another tub of clean water and cut the the ribs off and put them in the clean water. The reason I do all this is cause it help to cool the meat down, keeps the blood off the meat and also keeps the flies and bees off as everyone know how bad they are at the leaning stations. My filets are the cleanest I have ever seen and taste very good too. As a hunter too, you always have to cool the meat down as fast as possible. Give this method a try and see what you think.
If you go by my previous method there won't be any blood in meat when u filet it. I have been told by a meat packer that you don't want to soak meat of any kind(fish or game) in water that it lessons the flavor of it.
Well, I hope that's not true because when I freeze my fish fillets I Freeze them in water so they don't get freezer burn...I haven't noticed I difference in taste though but they also don't last long in my freezer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pgwilliamson
CBfan
i meant dont soak filets in water. Some folks put the filets in ice water for a while,.they get waterlogged .. It's ok to freeze in water, better to freeze em in ice water. A lot of the time I will put filets on cookie sheet and freeze them then dip in ice water then re freeze , then dip again and freeze then into freezer bags, that way doesn't take up as much room in freezer and you can take only as much as you need... I know its a lot of work but hey it's worth it.
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 .....
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by purplelab
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.