Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Ice fishing is on in MN!

I cleaned one last friday evening and included it with our fish fry on Lake of the woods MN.

Cut a ring around the body, just through the skin and behind the head. Use a pliers to pull the skin off like a tube sock. for mine the wind was blowing and it was below zero, hands were freezing fast and the fish was freezing as I was cleaning. So I kind of did a sloppy job, but I still got a lot of meat.

Once you get that skin pulled almost all the way off you can go back up front and start behind the head, cut just like you are taking back straps out of an animal for the rib cage portion, start from the front, cut down from just left or right from center, down to the rib bones, you will feel them with the knife. When you get the length of the rib cage cut down to the ribs then start at the front and follow the ribs out, filleting the backstraps free from the rib cage. behind the rib cage there is more meat, more of a fillet, it's easy. You will end up with a nice long cut of fresh water cod off both sides. one half of the cut is more of a cord shape (back strap) that tapers into a flat fillet cut for the tail section.

There's no bones, it's a gross job because it's a gross fish. but hey, people eat the legs off a nasty ass frog so, why not eat a pout?

I soak the meat on cold salted water, after a while I dump the water and do a final rinse before cooking.

Like the kid says, boiling is quite popular. I had a fish fry going so I fried this one. Dry shake on breading that I made with flour, instant potato flakes and a few seasonings.

The girls wanted nothing to do with it so us boys had it to ourselves. We melted a stick of butter for dipping.

It was awesome.

I didn't take any pics cleaning the pout, but I took this picture of it soaking in a zip bag to lure a buddy across the lake for a fish fry.