Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Need advice on electric knife for filleting fish.

Yes what Roger says, speed. A good high rpm electric will melt through bones and float right across the skin to give you a skinless fillet in seconds. I can do both sides of an average 12” crappie in under half a minute. I do still use a small fillet knife to cut the bones out of the filets after they’re all done. And I don’t use an electric on catfish, I’m not very good at it and even if you are there’s meat that you can’t get with the electric knife.

I will not clean fish other than catfish, trout, or salmon if I can’t use an electric. Too much work and I can’t do nearly as neat a job of it.

I started using one after I caught 48 crappie and hand filleted them as usual, took forever and my back killed me, I'd rather butcher a deer than that many fish with a knife. That was in the 70s. The back issue was a low table, I picked up an old wood top ironing board that's higher, folds nice for taking to camp.

Often I clean 50 to 100 fish at a time, as the kid stated, once rolling it's 30 sec a fish, 100 fish take about an hour with prep and someone cutting the ribs off.

Ocean fish I still use my Dexters, the are big and fillet a bit different.

Kent

This is your answer. American Angler. Better blades, better motor, better knife. I don't have an exact number, but mine has done couple hundred reds, and near a thousand speckled trout.


Clyde

As a side note, krp reminded me with his ironing board, I have a 16”x40” piece of 1” UHMW that I set on top of the trash barrel for a filet table. I have a smaller piece that stays in my truck for a bait board when catfishing. If you can get your hands on some it’s amazing for a cleaning table, 30 seconds with the hose and everything just slides right off.
I put the big one on the dining room table to butcher deer, elk, or pig quarters in the fall and winter. One of the best things I ever dug out of the scrap bin at my old job.

Thank you to all 3 gentlemen !

Guess I'm just used to doing it the old school way.

As a kid on holidays, I used to fillet hundreds of fish a day.

Kent - Table height is a big thing !

I bought one of these 5 years ago - perfect height & running water on hand.







Best $70 bucks I ever spent.

I guess after the fishing fun, I don't mind doing a little work, to put food on the table !

My daugher bought me one of those without the sink last year, i now keep it in the mountais and the ironing board at home. I can still hand filet and have for a couple fish.

Kent

Many times I've gotten home at 9 or 10 at night and have 50 to 100 fish to clean and working at 5 the next morning, speed it important.

Kent

I would not go back to a fixed blade fillet knife and don't think I know anyone who would.

One would think, by reading this thread, that some states have no daily or possession limit on fish...

No limit on crappie or yellow bass, both great eating fish, I don't care for catfish, if I don't have a stash of crappie or yellows I will keep smallies and even largemouth if I need a bag of fillets, limits on those.

Kent

Once wife and I took her sister and BIL to apache fishing, didn't catch much until right before dark, stripies came into the flats in pods... we call them stripies, yellow bass smallest of the striper family, look like a striper with a yellow belly when mature...

Anyway you couldn't get the bait in and they'd hit, BIL was baiting the girls hooks, I would net both their fish at one time and unhook, by the time I put them in the live well the girls would have 2 more fish.

2 hrs from home and I had to work the next morning early... come on girls we have to quit... No way they were catching and we were staying... thought we had maybe 60 in the well so was throwing their catch off the back in the dark, I didn't want to clean 100 fish.

Finally quit and got home about 11 and unloaded fish, we had 115 to clean.

Kent

This

Still use a fixed for de boning and skinning, but the electric does the heavy lifting. Reason? Easier, especially on bigger fish.

There isn’t when we’re crappie fishing in our own 8 acre pond. We cleaned 288 one Memorial Day!

Mister twister saltwater series with the fine blades

I have filleted thousands of salmon, halibut, and catfish. The only electric knife I tried was a Mr Twister. So far so good. No way in hell would I ever go back to a non electric knife.

Wow. That would be sweet if you're really getting into them.

Mister Twister. Get the 11" blades with the more agressive teeth for going through big ribs.