How To Clean Bluegill Fish

my buddy and i caught our limit of blue gill about the size of you hand and his way of cleaning fish is totally different than mine what is some of you guys technique to cleaning small fish......

i scale mine with a little plastic scaler they sell at most tackle shops then head them with an electric knife. i prefer my bluegill skillet fried whole, and not cut down to just the fillets. i like all other fish cut down to fillets but not bluegill or small crappie
it is easyer on your hands to wear a pair of jursey gloves if you have very many to work up.

matt
Filet bluegills. When it's time to eat, you'll appreciate the fact that you don't have to slow down for bones.
Start at the front, cut down behind the gills, turn the knife sideways and start cutting to the back, working from the top of the fish. Cut to the tail and stop. Flip that pice of meat over, then work the knife in between the skin and the meat. Takes a couple of secs. per side. Before you fry, check each piece for rib bones you might have missed.

I fillet them but always find the rib bones and have to stop and carve them out. My kids would have a neck full of puncture wounds if I didn't.
Once I was frying bluegill for the two oldest ones when they couldn't even see over the kitchen counter. I was frying and not paying attention and when I laid another fillet on the platter, it was suddenly empty. And there were two little greasy faces down there, poking the last hot fillets in with their little greasy hands. They'd eaten 5 or 6 fish and never said a word, just crammed them in one after another.
Outdoor Life had a page on cleaning them this month. They basically say to do it like Multi does it, filet slabs down to the spine, front to back, then pick the ribs out.
(OT) But then again in the same issue Outdoor Life slammed the new Savage right-bolt left-port .223 target gun for having a 1:8 twist instead of a 1:12. Some outdoor writers are just plain nuts.

Like Multi said, only with an electric filet knife. i can do both sides on about 20 seconds per fish
My dad's family was poor when he was growing up in Madisonville. When they didn't have anything to do and were short on food to eat for the day, him and his brother would walk down the railroad tracks to PeeWee Lake and catch some bluegill with a cane pole. They would build a fire, scale them with a spoon, then put a stick in their mouths and roast them over the fire just like they were a hot dog.
One way to get a little more meat out of them is to scale them (I use a spoon too) and then make the first fillet cut down the spine and cut right down to the tail and bring it off with skin on. Cut the ribs out and you're good to go.
I hate scaling fish but if the panfish are running small it's the way I do it.
I've never done it, because I like them fried and don't keep the little ones, BUT you can grind them and cook them up like salmon patties. That is scaled and gutted first.
Wow, I didn't realize cleaning bluegill was that complicated. Isn't it just like cleaning most any other fish except you're more careful to maximize all the meat? I really thought there was only one correct way. I've done hundreds of them. Bluegill fishing is about the only kind of fishing I like. Well, trout fishing is kinda cool. Trout has like two ribcages or some crap.
1. Place the fish flat on a table facing towards you, hold the tail, and scale them before any cuts, a metal spoon works great, drawing the spoon towards you.

2. Take a sharp fillet knife and vertically cut behind the gills, starting at the spine, going all the way down until you hit bone, and stop. Making several shallow cuts seems to work best.

3. Flip the fish around facing away from you and horizontally cut close to it's spine, getting as close as possible to the bones, making several shallow cuts, drawing the knife towards you. Do this all the way down to the tail if possible, the meat may be too thin if it's a smaller one, so just stop soon after the fin if so.

4. Keep horizontally cutting down towards its belly until you hit bone, and stop. Just continue to work back towards the tail, cutting all the way down to the bone, which is the ribcage.

5. Once you get past the ribcage, just horizontally cut all the way through until you hit the tail until the meat is completely separated. If it is a smaller fish, as mentioned in step 3, at this point just poke your knife all the way through, lay it as flat to the bones as possible, then cut back to the tail. Keeping the meat around the belly attached makes this step much easier.

6. Go back and make the last vertical cut around the ribcage to totally separate the fillet.

7. Don't forget to wash the meat and everything else.

Doing it this way gets pretty much all of the available meat off, and you don't have to pick out the rib cages later, nothing like that, very clean, it just takes awhile. Am I missing something? I really didn't think you could get very creative in this process.
LOL!! That's what it's all about man. Ya got to love it. I can hardly wait until my son is about 4 or 5 so he can start going fishing with me. I've never learned to fillet a fish. I've always practiced catch and release but when my son gets older, I'll have to learn!
hey thamks
thanks to all you guys for your helpfu tips on how to clean those lil rascals but they sure do taste good thanks again to all.........
I mostly fillet any fish these days, as I usually am feeding others besides myself.
If I know I am the only one eating'em, sometimes I just scale (with spoon as said above) gut'em, cut off their head and fins and wall-ahhhh that's it. Seasoned, floured, and fried in a pan and there you go, the meat peels off the bones easily and the fried skin is tastey. I wouldn't do this with kids (or finicky adults), as most are too used to chicken nuggets and chomping right in.

Next time your filleting a mess of them and get tired of filleting, scale and gut a half dozen for something different. You'll have to flip them when your pan frying them, get that skin nice'n brown and crispy.