Cleaning a Sunfish

Growing up, one of my favorite weekend activities was a family fish fry. We would typically head out to a pond or lake to catch some fish, Dad would clean them, and then we would fry up the results.

More often than not, we would catch a mess of Bluegill, one of a number of common freshwater Sunfish.

Nothing beats a mess of fried, boneless, Bluegill filets. Totally sublime chunks of mild fish covered in crispy shell of corn meal, flower, black pepper, salt, and beer based batter. Alternatively, you can take the whole fish or a whole filet, dredge it in a mix of corn meal, salt, and pepper, then fry it up in some butter in a cast iron pan. Either way, can’t lose (Thanks to my big sis Ann for reminding me of the “other best way” to eat Bluegill!)

On our most recent trip to Missouri, Roger learned to bait a hook, cast a line, and reel in a fish. Proof in the photo at left.

Once caught, the fish have to be cleaned. I have sat down with my Dad and cleaned fish, following his lead. But I always forget how in the interim months between fishing adventures.

To make sure that doesn’t happen again, I photo-documented the process of cleaning a Bluegill/l/l / Sunfish / Crappie. The goal was to produce a bunch of filets. The process could be modified slightly if an on-the-bone result is desired.

If the realities of putting food on the table don’t bother you, click through to see a pictorial guide to cleaning a fish with descriptions of each step….

There are a variety of methods for cleaning these small, freshwater fish. I have documented two basic methods with the key difference being whether you leave the head/guts on or off during cleaning. It really doesn’t make much a of a difference. Clearly, if serving whole fish on the bone is the desired result, then removing the head/guts is likely going to be the preferred method.

Thanks to my father — Roger Bumgarner — for taking the time to let me photo-document this process. Once photographed, I did take over and clean the rest of the fish!

Head On Method

(1) Start by slicing the fish just behind the front fin and cartilage that is found behind the gills. Make the slice from the belly up to the top of the fish.

(2) Continue slicing over the top of the fish and around the other side all the way to the belly. This cut doesn’t have to be that deep, but should be through the flesh itself.

(3) Take the knife point and slice the skin all the way down the backbone. This cut should be as close to the backbone as possible right down the top of the fish.

(4) Continue this cut all the way down to the tail. Take care to not poke the knife into the filet — into the meat of the side of the fish — too deeply. You are just trying to make a gap between backbone and filet through which proper filet removal can take place.

(5) Slice the meat away from the backbone of the fish. Keep the knife as close to the bones of the back as possible. Angle it into the bones just slightly. You want to remove all of the flesh from the fish’s skeleton. It seems to work best by starting at the head and working backwards. Don’t worry about the meat on the rib cage just yet.

(6) Keep slicing the meat away from the top half of the fish until you get to the end of the rib cage. Now, slide the knife along the backbone all the way through to the bottom of the fish. Pressing down with the knife, you can now slice carefully all the way through to the tail of the fish while losing very little meat.

(7) With the filet separated from all but the rib cage, you can lift up the filet and carefully slice the meat away from the rib cage itself. Slice all the way down the rib cage to the bottom of the fish.

There may be a fin or cartilage stuck to the filet. Remove it before moving on to skinning.

(8) To skin the filet, start by peeling back a little bit of skin from the filet at the thick end of the filet (this will be the piece by the top of the front part of the filet). Then, using a pair of skinning plier or your fingers, hold down the skin and slide a knife against the skin and under the filet. Using a gentle sawing motion, slice the filet from the skin.

If the knife is angled into the skin a bit, very little meat will be left on the skin, if any at all.

(9) Continue slicing the filet off the skin all the way through the tail. End result; one beautiful small fish filet.

(10) Turn the fish over and repeat from step (3) to remove the filet from the other side of the fish.

Head and Guts Removed Method

(a) Using the same cut as in (1) and (2) above, slice all the way around the head of the fish. This cut should be deep. All the way to the bone.

(b) Rip the head off and use a finger to clean out the abdominal cavity. That yellow-orange stuff in the photo is eggs. A lot of people find it to be quite tasty. You can also save the livers for catfish bait.

Before anyone gets upset over harvesting fertile fish, keep in mind that Bluegill reproduce very very quickly. If not fished and fished often, the population will rapidly get out of hand. The damned things are an annoyance when trying to fish for bass or catfish in that they will strip the hook in short order. A lot of the time, it is quite easy to catch bluegill with no bait on the hook!

Clean the guts out thoroughly. If you want to serve the fish whole, now is a good time to slice off the fins and alimentary canal. You can use the knife to either scrape the scales off or use the skinning pliers to rip the skin off gently.

Otherwise, grab the fish and go back to step (3) above and filet as per the head on method.

A modified version of this same method works for most freshwater fish, including bass and trout. It is really a matter of figuring out where the cartilage and bones are and working around them.

The one exception is catfish. They don’t have scales, but a continuous very slipper skin.

The easiest way to deal with a catfish is to nail it belly side down to a fence or phone pole, slice around its neck and then use the skinning pliers to literally peel the entire skin off like a sock. Once skinned, the fish can be taken down and prepared as desired (bone-in, small chunks, big filets, etc…).

I would have photo-documented that process but the damned catfish proved to be smarter than I was this trip. Not so last trip….

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 25th, 2006 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Food, Hacks, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.