Been catching a bunch of hand sized bluegill, but have never eaten them. Are they worth messing with or keep turning them loose?

They are delish, GW.

yes

No.

Yum Yum!

Oh hell yeah!

Scale, remove head, gut. Oil then flour both sides. Pan fry in oil.

Depends on how big your hand is

Depends on how big your hands are!

If you got midget hands, use them for catfish bait

One of the best eating freshwater fish you can find.

I don’t bother with them.

I love pearch, and gills. We used to go too Canada for a week in the spring. The limit was 100 a day!

Denny

They are as good as they come for fried fish, but you might find a light coating of Aunt Jemimah white corn meal is better than flour.

My favorite fish. Fried or boiled.

No limit on bluegill and crappie here. I could've filled a five-gallon bucket with bluegill this morning.

My favorite fish to eat by far

you guys must have different blue gills than i have eaten. the ones i had were bony and the little bit of meat you got off of one was bland. seems a shame to kill a fish for what little you get off of them.

that said, i ain't a big fish eater. i like thick chunks of cod batter dipped and fried or some big old catty fillets with cornbread batter. anything else just don't float my boat.

I agree.

bingo!
right about now they will be full of eggs (depending where you live)
take those skeins and dip in a batter and deep fry too!
damn! i am going fishing!

Not sure I'd mess with one that size, unless you're Paul Bunyan.

Yes.

Good but bony, about like perch

Filleted 50 this day. Kids were eating.
wells fargo near me

My favorite flyover country fish.

It's good fish but crappie is larger.

Walleye is king, bitches.

Use them for bait.

The crappie here are skinny. Wish I could find some like Richard Gene the Fishing Machine catches.

Excellent eating fish, and make hellacious snook and tarpon bait in brackish water.

After i scale them i slice down each side of the back and anal fin and pull them out whit their bones with a catfish skinner.

They, crappie and salt water speckled trout make the best fried fish.

Do yourself a favor an get an electric filet knife.

If they're hand sized, I'd fillet them.

Yes..........bluegill is EXCELLENT !!!
NO.......... I ain't pizzin with 50 fish that small to make a plate of fillets.





Mic drop..........

Golden fried fish needs Yellow corn meal, as do shrimp and fried oysters afaic.

Absolutely, the best tasting fish flesh on the planet. Not much there at that size, but well worth the effort.

Delicacy . . . next only to Crappie.

I would be filling freezer bags with fillets for the year.

2 fillets almost equals the breast meat from a mourning dove. 6 -7 makes a great meal.

If they are big enough to fillet, don’t ever throw one back!

Have you ever eaten bluegill ?
Do you like Fish ?


Agree w/ another poster: Corn Meal is better than flour > IMO


Jerry

As Leroy, (RIP) would say: "Sure after they swim in the Crisco Lake"

Bluegill is great.

Always been pretty popular for eating but getting popular at bars around here recently and it blows the traditional cod fish fries away in my opinion.

Bluegills, Crappies, Sunnies, great eating, among my favorites. Small ones are a pain to fillet however.

Cook the smaller ones whole.

we always had them deep fried in cornmeal, just excellent.

That one is a bit small, I don't keep em that small unless they swallow the hook. They are very good eating. Fried in a seasoned corn meal mix after dipping in an egg , milk and mustard solution is good stuff. The big ones can be ( butterflied ) and this is basically filleted but they still have the skin and the tail but no other bones. I specifically seek them out on some of my fishing trips.

I was fishing some lillypads once, i had about 10 thick pumpkinseeds on a stringer, had been a few mins before the next good keeper got hooked.

Pulled up that stringer and there was a FAT cottonmouth sucking on the last fish on the string. I only noticed it after nearly grabbing it. 😬

Meh

I dropped the whole thing and paddled on. 🙀

Best to catch them,other sunfish, crappies through the ice and early spring. They are excellent fried. They get wormy when the water warms tho.

Poach the bony little bastards and break the meat out of the bones.Pick the bones out. Then use them for fish cakes. Out of cold water they are pretty good. Out of warm water they taste like swamp water. Bass...pretty much the same thing. Serve the fish cakes with a sauce made out of ketchup, Mayo, some Old Bay ,thin a bit with water and whatever......

Ya coulda had snake for dinner!

will agree with the cornmeal for fish but flour mix for oysters and shrimp or breadcrumbs or cracker meal or spacial k cerial crushed up for shrimp and oysters

I catch a lot of them to use as catfish bait on jug lines. Sure catch some big ones that way. Around here the bigger Bluegills come from Meridian state park and Lake Whitney. Yes I usually skin them, dip em in a batter made from Mesa flour (corn flour) and egg then either pan fry or deep fry. Fine tasting fish.

This. At least in Minnesota.

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.

Yes and yes - but I don't like bluegill or crappie, especially if the skin is left on. Tilapia are worse than either. I just don't care for the taste. Walleye and northern are fine.

I just finished eating some bluegill fillets for supper. They are good. Walleye crappie and bass are better.

Bluegills are great,, also around here we have goggle eye or warmouth bass and small mouth bass, very good an fresh tasting,,Northern hogsuckers and golden redhorse(yellow suckers) are king if you know how to prepare and cook em

Too small even for bait.















P

Sweet meat fried crispy in corn meal with garlic potatoes

Walleye didnt have much flavor to me unless fried in bacon grease or loaded with Old Bay or other seasoning.

GW is blessed to have a place he can load up on them. I have to work the beds on a lake in east Texas to get any real numbers and they arent spawning all the time im there.

Best day bluegill fishing I’ve had. Me and buddy fished a pond. Kept 16 bluegill that weighed 22# on the scale.

Whole Bigger fish. Cut slits ( slashes) to the bone. Makes it fry up a lot faster.

Chicken gets flour. Fish gets cornmeal.

I guess if you're hungry enough to mess with em. I'm rarely that hungry and much prefer walleye, crappie or perch.

Be nice to know where you are doing that, GW and what you are catching them on.

Filet them, dip in milk, roll in cracker crumbs and fry em up. The fillet will only be about the size of a store bought fish stick, but that's where the similarities end.

exactly !!!

Channel Cat skinned and filleted in steaks is the best.

The meat is light and tasty. They do have bones but if you catch biguns they are not much different from crappy. Oh can fillet or scrape, cut the fins out and remove the rib cage batter and fry.

For bream, esp red bellies. 3 finger rule. Bigger than 3 fingers wide, in the bucket they go.

Scale em in no time with a spoon....

Absofuckinglutly!!

They are the best tasting fish there is. I prefer them much to crappie.

I keep every bluegill/perch I catch if it is big enough to filet. When I was a kid, we would sit on the river bank and catch a bucket of them. They are a sweeter meat than crappie in my opinion. I really like walleye also. This was the first spring in a long time where I didn't catch any walleye on the Lake of the Ozarks. Cornmeal is the only way to treat them.

What kind of Yankee dumbfuckery is this “flour for fried fish”? Cornmeal is the only way to go.

If you fry them whole scaled with the skin on, score them vertically about every 3/8" down the sides. That does two things, you get a bit more corn meal ( I like a 50/50 mix of yellow and white), and it cooks a bunch of those little bones up crispy and brittle. Blugill around the 10" + mark are fine eating fish.

+1 on this plus what GC said on scoring.....



X-VERMINATOR

This^^^. They confused southern fried chicken with fish and use flour.

https://www.facebook.com/murray.ragan/videos/2166724223418205/

I kept a 5 gallon bucket of them just like that last week. Took them to the lake and turned them into catfish. Scale, filet, thread filet on a 6/0 circle hook under a 4oz weight and hold on. Boom! Little perch turns into bluecat right before your eyes.

I used to clean them as a kid with my grandad, he’d clean anything big enough to bite the hook. They were good eating but I got over cleaning fish under about a foot long about 15 years ago. YMMV

No limit in Idaho. Same for perch, catfish, and crappie.

Blue cat cant compare to to blue gills on the plate.

They are good. But, too small to mess with.

Maybe not but I enjoy catching them a lot more and don’t mind cleaning them near as much. I don’t guess I have as sensitive a palette as others when it comes to eating fish. To me crappie, perch, blues, channels, and bass smaller than about 3lbs all taste about the same. Flatheads and Walleye/Saugeye I can tell the difference from the others and prefer as I find them much cleaner tasting as well as being much firmer.

I'd rather eat saltwater fish than those bony Bluegills.

I'd rather eat bluegills. There's a lake around here that grow them smallish crappie size. We target those and let the pike have the small ones. Don't need to dust them with anything before frying.

Fun to catch with a fly rod particularly if they are willing to take a popper among the weeds.

Southern Oregon, and I've caught them mostly on jigs or a worm under a bobber.

I would trade halibut for bluegill lb for lb

Thanks for the invite.....

I’ll clean the halibut if you’ll clean the perch. Bet I’m done first.

Thanks, GW. River or lake?

Its fun to put a split shot about 4 in above a long shank worm hook and slowly hop a piece of worm back to you.

No doubt. I would rather eat the perch though.

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.

They have halibut in Oklahoma?

They don't but I get one decent one and they are in it all year to catch up.

Slit the belly, cut the head off, put em some flour with a bit of salt and pepper, fry em up. Good eats, anything bigger than a hand always tastes muddy.

Not up here.

Never had a muddy tasting bluegill...….Did you cook it in mud?

GW,

If you got a fly rod it will make your bluegill catching a thousand times more enjoyable.

Good stuff, shootem.

That is the only way I have ever seen them done. Seems to me it would be tedious to attempt to fillet a sunfish unless it was a huge one and therefore lead to the question "are bluegills worth messing with to eat".

Bluegills are excellent table fare.

Oh yes. Delicious. Bigger ones can be filets. Smaller ones I scale, gut, and cut the head off and cook whole.

Fried is the most popular way I'm sure. But I like them baked in the oven in butter and olive oil and seasoned. Great flavor

-Jake

Best panfish there is to eat

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.

Perch are pike, I think. Close to walleye.

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"

Keep in mind, hes a professional chef and makes money off selling batter concoctions. No chef is going to say roll it in cornmeal.

https://thefisheriesblog.com/2016/09/26/perch-bream-and-sunfish-whats-the-difference/

Completely different bone structure, Ghost.

I'm pretty sure I'm correct.

Totally different families. Pike/pickerel fall in Esocidae and perch/walleye are in Percidae.

I'll take the word of the guy whose words I cannot pronounce. lol

Right that's what I was alluding to...walleye (walleyed pike) and perch. A perch ain't no friggin panfish.

A Muskie ain't no perch though. 😂

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.

Muskie's schidt perch whole!

Just for you babe.

Electrics knives are great for cutting through the backbone behind the head when you don't want to.

[quote=jaguart} .... No chef is going to say roll it in cornmeal.[/quote]

And there you have it.

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.

Really...Lack of experience..Saw it right off..

But feel free to ask chit like this..

Amen from this corner.

Can only speak of the Alabama brim I'm familiar with. Ate hundreds probably. Nothing "fishy" about it. Goes for crappie too.

So you do eat the skin? I don’t know, never eaten a freshwater fish of any stripe any way besides filleted. I do know that the silver left on a catfish filet has a fishy taste if you don’t get it all off.

Lol, Turdcutter is back! Sorry I haven't ever lived somewhere where bluegills are a thing until just recently. Maybe you should regale us with your tennis shoe and pavement adventures. Maybe tell us about the senior discount at Denny's; you know, something you're an expert at.

Your funny...Sun Fish/Blue gills/crappy...Oh my..Are they worth it you ask?

Why fish if there not?

I miss you dude...

Yep. If you scale a brim, bluegill, shellcracker, whatever and rinse them well there's just no problem far as I'm concerned. I'm in the No Batter camp too. Pat dry, dip in milk with maybe a beaten egg added and roll in corn meal or a corn meal based seafood prep. Catfish ain't brim. And for any fish with a dark blood line I skin and strip that out. Lots of folks don't like fried bluefish, but if you filet and skin and cut out the blood line that's a good fish to fry FRESH. Talking up to 3 or 4 pounds.

I ain't scaling any fish.

To easy just to fillet and be done with it.

Filet them all, no heavy batter, nothing better.

So you do eat the skin? I don’t know, never eaten a freshwater fish of any stripe any way besides filleted. I do know that the silver left on a catfish filet has a fishy taste if you don’t get it all off. [/quote]


Yes, the skin (which is thin) fries up nice and crispy

Well, we know what you weren't doing during your absence, educating yourself. You do another stint in county? Still the cellblock push-up champion?

The skin, and the tail fin, fried crispy, are the best part.

Not much point of coating in corn meal or blend if you don't intend to eat the coated part.

Here's how I've done it since I was about 8 years old.

This is the way my family has fried them for 3 generations. After scaling and removing heads, leave all of the fins in place. Pan fry or deep fry until very brown and crispy.

When eating, first thing is gently pull out the fins and you will notice if fried brown enough, a row of tiny bones will come out attached to each fin. Discard these onto a separate plate for scraps. After fin bones are removed, use your fork to easily peel the meat away from the spinal connected bones.

This leaves large boneless bites even from small fish, works so easy even little kids can do it after being shown.
Enjoy

Never heard of filleting panfish before now. Why would you want to? The main reason we fillet bigger reshwater fish is because it's hard to cook a thick fish evenly in a pan.

Gets rid of the bones and skin. All that's left is tasty flesh.

Dip it and fry.

I've had bluegill on several occasions. It's strong tasting compared to Crappie, but it's edible.

I like the skin, nice and crispy. And if you can't easily de-bone a panfish at the table it's under cooked. And you get all the meat that way. (need to thoroughly cook freshwater fish, they often carry parasites.)

I ate a lot of skillet fried bluegills and sandbass growing up, good times!!

Ghost, Just noticed where you are at. May amuse you to know we don't even fillet smaller walleye. We do when they're too big to cook evenly, I like to leave the skin on. Easy to scale.

We had a sand bass population explosion in a popular lake a few years ago. Would you believe the people up here considered them trash fish? I had a ball using light tackle, a big one turns sideways and you know you've got something. And ate well.

Good Lord!!!! Folks are missing out on some good grub: fried sandbass, cornbread, coleslaw, iced tea...Mmmm!!

That's interesting, my circle has always filleted everything, except stream trout. Just gut them and even leave the head on.

Never heard of anyone leaving walleye skin on. Why would you?

Some fish has to do with how you prepare it.

Back in college me and my roommate paid for beer and boat gas selling gaspagew ( drum) to Vietnamese fish market. Who knows what they sold them as. Flaky white meat. Has a blood line that needs to be cut out. Freshwater redfish if you will.

Good gosh, sorry, but have not read all 6 pages.



But it taste fishy??????? WTF is it supposed to tasts like??????????????

I grew up eating wild caught catfish & about all the pan fish. Scaled, gutted, SKIN ON & BONE IN. It established to me what fish taste like at an early age, late 1950's-early 1960's. Times passed & farm raised fish became popular, the flavor faded. Folks de-boned, filleted, skinned & washed the flavor away.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a good meal. But fishy tasting gets my attention, not swampy, but flavor, flavor that so many are missing. I rest.

Speaking the perch you have up north, you certainly are, Ghost.

We incorrectly call the little sunfishes collectively perch down south.

And in East Texas crappie are generally called white perch.

When it's all over, I guess it all depends on how hungry you are. I've eaten Jackfish a time or two. Rather strong taste but If you can get the spiny bones out, it'll eat. Forget the technical name but their kinda like a Northern Pike but not near as large.

No.....

About the best pan fish there is. They are easy to dress, tasty, with firm, flaky flesh.

Many years ago before the advent of good fillet knives and electric knives most, including me, were quite happy scaling sunfish, crappie, bass, white bass, walley etc and rolling in cornmeal and cooking and eating with the skin on. I occassionaly do the same at times now. As kids we would love eating the tails fried with the fish.

I prefer flounder broiled in the oven and slathered in melted butter and lemon after cutting across in two directions leaving a diamond pattern. They are scaled before cooking and the skin is eaten. They have their own unique flavor cooked this way, as lobster, shrimp and king crab do and are delicious.

I have also scaled and crosscut bass and white bass and cooked inside a bbq pit over charcoal and mopped them with butter and lemon. It reminds me of the taste of broiled flounder. Unreal good, Kid.

I plan on doing that again in the future and seasoning with toneys or old bay.

There is a secret to good fried fish. Drop in 375 degree grease and pull it when it floats if using a deep fryer. You want a crispy outside and moist center. The skin leaves no fishy taste. The red blood/fat line left under the skin does that on stripers and such. Ive never seen it on bass, crsppie, speckled trout or gills. Redfish can need trimming.

I have never eaten flounder in a resturant that was woth eating, btw.

Bon appetit, Kid.

PS. I sear the skin side down scales and all on salmon. No fishy taste on wild fish.

That what y’all call shoepiq? Chupiq? Grinnnel here. Bowfin.

I have eaten and enjoyed fried grinnel of a couple of pounds.

I’ve only whacked em with a machete and thrown back to the gar and turtles.

If you know someone who knows how to get the meat off a buffao fish without the wing bones through the meat you can meal and deep fry it and really hurt yourself. Delish.

Kid, you can do this with scaled bass, white bass and walleye also. Its a real palate pleaser.

He might be speaking of pickerel. He mentioned they were like northern pike but smaller, sounds like a pickerel. I've heard bowfin called dogfish. In the old Ozark's walleye were often called jack pike.

You got that right. You need to take an eight of an inch off under the silver skin too, down the outside bloodline. On a nice cat that will be a couple inches wide.

Not necessary on small cats in clear water. In lakes with a lot of shad, esp threadfin, you better trim heck out of fat cats.

This^^^.

I’m curious now and I’m going to have to try it. Almost went perch fishing tonight to try it out, I’ve got one pond that it’s not unusual to catch goggleyes and bluegill that are about a pound each when I’m bass fishing. I was close to digging some worms and going to gather me a dozen of them up but decided to go catfishing instead so me and my little boy are at the lake with the lantern soaking cut shad.

I lived in Alaska for a decade and cooked a thousand salmon skin on but never ate any of the skin. I even scrape the grey off the outside of the filet to avoid that bait bucket flavor.

I catch drums pretty regular while catfishing, usually scale them and cut for bait. After reading on here that some folks down TX/LA way eat them I filleted a couple and cut the red out of them. Who would have thought, when fried they taste exactly like fish. My wife likes the stones out of their heads too for whatever reason.

Catfish in running water taste 100x better than farm raised. Give me a tabby any day.

Live crawfish. They are fun to catch. Fight like crazy.

I caught a monster, like 20lbs, on an ultralight with a roadrunner when I was in college. I was fishing a little creek that runs into Texoma and hammering the sandbass. All the sudden my reel is about to catch fire drag a screaming. I just knew I had a big striper that had run up out of the lake and then after 20 minutes I land this huge drum. Didn’t take a picture or anything, just conked him and pitched him off in the weeds.

I dont like fishey schiett taste from fat. My fish taste like clean fish, not fishy like fish slime. There is good fish and bad fish and most bad fish is yuk, fishy.

I need to find a place to catfish around here.

Yes, i can taste the alfalfa in farmed fish, esp catfish.

Drum are good fried if big enough to get fillets out of their thin sides.

I can't stand fishy flavor either. Neither do I like mushy fish. Flaky, firm and mild flavored is what I want. Walleye and perch is best for that without question. Crappie is close but not as firm and flaky as I'd like.

Yum great eating fish. I like to mix cornmeal/flour 50/50 for frying sometimes add ranch dressing mix and paprika to the regular salt and pepper. Just thinking about it makes want to go fishing.

I would pass on the catfish and stock up the freezer with "perch" fillets, GW.

They are a little work but only crappie and speckled sea trout are in the same league as far as fried fish are concerned.

I don't think I've ever scaled a fish in my life.. I've fileted a few..

+10 on this especially on top water flies or poppers, but have caught many more on soft hackles, very small leech patterns and small (sz 12) Pistol Pete's.

I like to leave the skin on mine. Salt the skin before frying. Fry up crispy. mmmmm good!

I’ve got a 2 wgt fly rod just for that. 🤠

I like to use my 3 wt but will use a 6wt for poppers especially if windy (often here in CO).

They definitely should be grass-fed rather than grain-fed.

You are making me too darned hungry.

Yea, that's the one, Chain Pickerel. Biggest one I ever caught was about 16" long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Hell of a fighter. Voracious appetite. Sharp teeth. Dad told me to kill every one I caught. Locally thought of as a trash fish.

I love catching and eating pickerel,,, good fish,, around these parts walleye are called jack salmon if you like to gig of a nite,they have a little white diamond on their back and their eyes will actually glow a reddish color

Chain pickerel get alot bigger than that around here. The biggest one I ever caught was 28" which is unusually large but pickerel in the 20 - 24" range are common. The meat is very good but they have the same bone structure as Northern pike so many people don't think of them as good eaters.

That’s how I see it. I got spoiled growing up eating saltwater fish that eat bait bigger than a bluegill. If I’m starving I’ll eat them little fresh water fish otherwise it’s not worth the time it takes to filet and [bleep] with them.

I have Hybrid Bluegill stocked in my pond. A sideways pic of my Great Grand Daughter.

One of my employees fishing our pond.

They do taste very good.

Yes you can eat the skin on scaled fish. I grew up eating the skin on rainbow trout too. Still do on pan sized .

I stand corrected, yes walleye were called jack salmon. Probably still are in the Ozarks river country where hosfly is from.

Walleye floats my boat better than catfish. Cod doesn't even come close.

This. Sweet white meat.

Too many bones, takes too much time to eat them.

Not if you fillet them. If you find a single bone, you're doing it wrong.

As far as northern pike goes, google how to fillet them boneless and they are one of the finest eating fish there is.

"Walleye just tastes like whatever you put on it" - Tony Dean

Finding bluegill beds.



[video:youtube]https://youtu.be