[mtman12672]

My 6 yo daughter caught a nice crappie today and wanted to take it home and eat it. We did and I tried to fillet it. Never filleted a fish before. Couple questions. Got a couple okay sized pieces, but nothing like I expected. My wife commented about how much meat I left on the fish.

1. Does anyone have an easy to follow instruction or web link that will walk me through it next time.

2. When filleting, I did well on the upper (shoulder) section of each side of the fish, but trying to cut a whole piece off of one side, I ran into bones (probably ribs) along the middle section of the fish. I didn't cut through these as I didn't want to end up with bones in the fillet, so I had to cut little bits of meat off the bottom portion of each side. Is this normal or was I doing something wrong. I saw a picture on the web of a filleted crappie with the piece still attached and it looked like the person had both the top and bottom of each side intact.

3. How much "meat" should I expect from one fish. It was about a 12" crappie, so I expected an okay amount based upon some I've seen people keeping on TV, but maybe you have to have a lot of these fish to get a good amount of usable meat.

Anyway, normally I throw back all the fish I catch but the daughter likes to keep them to eat so I better learn how to do this correctly.

Thanks for your help on this.

 

[laker taker]

Crappie isn't going to give you meal sized fillets. Do a search on how to fillet fish and you'll get plenty of hits. There are different methods for diferent species, ie,,, Salmonids, Pike, Panfish. I even use different methods for bigger fish like King Salmon compared to a 20" trout even though they are both similar body structure. I prefer to remove the skin but some people like to leave the skin on, I suppose it's personal prefrence and your cooking method.

 

[roth2000]

I like to filet the entire side of meat off the fish and then I remove the rib bones. If you are going to skin the fish I find it easiest not to cut it all the way off. I cut it right down to the tail and leave a small piece attached and then flip it over and skin it. When you skin it just get the knife under the skin and then grab the skin and wiggle it back and forth while holding the knife still, it will crawl right off. There are always going to be small "pin bones" in every fish that you catch that run along the lateral line about half way down the filet. How or if you choose to remove them is up to you but on smaller fish you won't notice them after you have cooked them. Whatever you do make sure you have a SHARP knife as it while make things much easier. I tend to prefer those without any serrations ??? because it allows me to fell what I am doing much better. Hope this helps.