Fish fillets

[greylundman]

What do you guys think? Skinning the fish you're going to eat or scaling them?

[George G]

My personal preferance is to scale the fish . With Bluegils I do not filet them for my self. Others don't want to mess with the bones etc. I like the way they taste pan fried with the bones. Walleys I scale and filet. Northern I use the "No Bones About It" method for filet and that works great. Takes practice to use the method but do you end up with some nice filets, scaled of course.

[mad4skies]

My personal preferance is to scale the fish . With Bluegils I do not filet them for my self. Others don't want to mess with the bones etc. I like the way they taste pan fried with the bones. Walleys I scale and filet. Northern I use the "No Bones About It" method for filet and that works great. Takes practice to use the method but do you end up with some nice filets, scaled of course.

Hey George....never scaled northern before, I would think it would be very messy will all the slime. The y bones are never a problem, have it down to a science and a special knife a friend gave to me.

[BlueRanger]

The first video is much better quality but the second one has some illustrations that help in visualizing what you're trying to accomplish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYhEvg28XPs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBzhM9aUqPI

I use this method with all my fish - other fish species have a line of straight bones in the same location as the Y-bones, and the only difference in removing those is that the 2 cuts are more parallel so the piece with the bones is a thin strip instead of a wedge.

[greylundman]

Thanks for the info. I was curious too about whether leaving the skin on perch or walleye would add any flavor. I always just skin them. Seems to me the flowage perch skin would be too thick to not skin the fillets.

[BlueRanger]

I can't imagine there's anything in the skin of a fish that's going to improve the taste - if anything, it seems more likely to introduce unwanted flavors. Smelt and stream trout are cooked that way, but I doubt it's for anything but practical reasons - imagine trying to fillet a 5 gallon pail of smelt! With anything bigger, the only reason I can think of for leaving it on is to protect the bottom from burning and sticking if you plan on baking or grilling it, but there are plenty of other solutions for that.

Speaking of perch, check out this clever trick! I haven't tried it, so I can't say whether it's really as easy as it looks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjTlFwQb7D0

[George]

Pretty much the way we do it as far as the northerns go. The perch thing looks fine, but it appears to me that the rib bones are still in the fish. Is this correct or am I missing something? All I can see on the video is the dorsal fin. Are the rib bones with it?

[BlueRanger]

The audio isn't very clear, but what he says is that once you fry them, you flake the meat off the bones with your fork and you're left with a "comb". Not saying it's the way to go, but I thought it was fun to watch.

[George]

That's what I thought. Also, after he pulled the fins and skin off, the body held its shape so I was pretty sure the ribs had to still be there. And you're right...pretty cool and fun to watch.

[Nick Kanauz]

I use my hunting knife and a Townsend Fish Skinner on every type of fish. It doesn't take me long to do a mess of fish either. And...no bones!