If you are proficient at cleaning fish they are no big deal to prepare either filleted or scaled. I think they taste better cooked on the bone scaled. But wife didn't grow up eating fish whole so most of them get the electric knife.
If you are proficient at cleaning fish they are no big deal to prepare either filleted or scaled. I think they taste better cooked on the bone scaled. But wife didn't grow up eating fish whole so most of them get the electric knife.
A good sharp fillet knife can do the job but its hard to keep the edge close to the spine because the meat has small compact and dense fibers. Crappie are similar. Bass and catfish and walleyes have softer flesh though crappie flakes apart after frying.
The texture when running your finger over the skinned side of the meat on each will feel rough. Its hard to keep the knife edge against the skin even with an electric.
Bass, white bass, crappie, bream, gills etc are all members of the sunfish family iirc.
Last edited by jaguartx; 05/11/19.
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I can't believe this is even a thread. Bluegill's are great eating no matter what time of the year.
Pan fish like gills, crappies, sunnies etc. are probably the easiest fish to fillet boneless. Crappie is my personal fave because they're bigger but bluegill's are great too.
If you want GOOD pickled fish, pickle bluegills. Thank me later.
Pickled northern...tops.
Everyone pickles northern and yes it's good. I'm just saying, try doing it with panfish some time. It's great. The fillets really firm up unlike how northern sometimes gets "squishy"
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A old fisherman told me years ago to merely use a dinnerware tablespoon to scrape the scales off against "the grain" (works better any any commercial de-scaler). Then de-head, gut.Then fry them up; the bones will be crispy.
My brother and I did up a five gallon bucket of 'gills within an hour.
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The fillets are great fried but for a different treat drop skinned fillets in a pot of boiling water full of shrimp boil. Use a basket to keep from bustin them up. Only takes about 20 seconds. Then lay them on ice to cool and eat with cocktail sauce. Betern' shrimp. If you don't feel like filleting, the whole deheaded fish is easy to eat anyway. Scale, cut off the head and gut. Leave the dorsal fins on the top. After they fry you can pull the dorsal fins out in one bunch and then poke your fork prongs in the fin hole and the fillet comes away easily. Actually get more meat than filleting them. God only knows how many bluegills me and my buddies caught in our high school years. One of them could fly fish and he and I would just wear their little fish butts out with a #8 or #6 black gnat. Little poppers were fun too but the black sinking bug was the real killer. We'd find the beds in May and fish out the biggest bedders then come back later and there'd be more. Made a milk run around the beds for as long as we wanted to fish and kept all we wanted to clean. 8' or 8 1/2' fiberglass rods, I forget which. If I tried swinging one of them all day now my arm would kink up and fall off.
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If you are proficient at cleaning fish they are no big deal to prepare either filleted or scaled. I think they taste better cooked on the bone scaled. But wife didn't grow up eating fish whole so most of them get the electric knife.
A good sharp fillet knife can do the job but its hard to keep the edge close to the spine because the meat has small compact and dense fibers. Crappie are similar. Bass and catfish and walleyes have softer flesh though crappie flakes apart after frying.
The texture when running your finger over the skinned side of the meat on each will feel rough. Its hard to keep the knife edge against the skin even with an electric.
Bass, white bass, crappie, bream, gills etc are all members of the sunfish family iirc.
Electrics knives are great for cutting through the backbone behind the head when you don't want to.
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I figured out a long time ago that bluegills, done the way you do a bass, is just too much trouble.
Coming home with 25 lbs of bluegills from an afternoon was originally dread inducing. However, I figured out that if you gut them and head them and put them on top of rice and steam them for a while, the skin comes off, the tail lifts up and take the spine and the bones with it. I started out with an electric fry pan, but switched to a wok with far more surface area.
You guys that head and gut these little guys. Do you eat the skin or does it peel off after you fry them? Only times I’ve ever eaten any fish skin it was really fishy and not something I wanted to try again.
