How to Prepare Your Fishing

Fishing can provide not only a great outdoor adventure but also a delicious meal for your family and friends. But before you can enjoy your fishing, you must first prepare properly. There are a few steps involved, including cleaning, filleting, skinning (if desired), stored and cooked. Learn more about all these steps in this section.

Cleaning the fish

If you are eating your catch, you have to keep it fresh. Keep the fish caught in a well with water, a cooler or a fishing line in the water. Also, always fill your ice chest or pit with the same water where you are fishing. The fish spoil quickly if not properly handled from the time it catches. Have softened flesh, a strong flavor and smell “fishy” or sour if not careful. In this part, we will give some essential tips on how to clean the fish as well as more detailed information on filleting and skinning your catch. For start, you’ll need some supplies:

• A clean surface
• A sharp filleting knife
• A container for discarded fish
• Some Ziploc bags for clean fish

How to fillet a fish

When you think of a fish dinner, you might think about a steak on the plate. This is the most common method to clean a fish. You can also keep a whole fish for grilling or broiling if you wish. Learning how to fillet a fish means cutting the meat without bones. Fish such as largemouth bass, redfish, and striped bass are usually filleting. Smaller fish, such as fish to fry, can also be filleted, but it takes more careful when making cuts. Knives for filleting have a long, thin blade that is sharp and is specifically designed for filleting fish. To work properly, they must be very, very sharp. If you have mud on your hands or the handle of the knife, wash to prevent you from slipping These are the steps for filleting a fish:

Place the fish on a flat surface side.

1. Cut the fish behind the gills and pectoral fins down, but not through the backbone.
2.  Turn the fish so that its back (dorsal fin) is facing up. Make a long cut along the back from the cut made behind the gills to tail.
3. Repeat this movement cutting until you can lift and separate the meat from the bone with the thumb.
4. Once you can lift the meat partially, continues to pass the tip of the knife along the ribs of fish fillet until most of the skeleton rises.
5. Push your knife blade around the body of the fish from the dorsal side through the stomach into the anal opening, and pull the knife towards the tail to separate the rest of the fish fillet.
6. Repeat these steps on the another surface of the fish.
7. Place the steak on the table with the skin side down. Insert the blade about a half inch of the tail, held firmly and put the knife between the skin and flesh at an angle.
8. With a little pressure and a sawing motion, cut against, but not through the skin.
9. Remove the fillets skin.
10. Lava each fillet in cold water.
11. Dry with a washed cloth or paper cloth. The fillets are ready to cook or freeze.

By learning how to clean the fish that can be of a smaller size, the bones can be small enough so that the knife pass through them. Follow steps 1 and 2, but then turn the blade so that it is flat as a table and throw it from head to tail. The knife blade is longer than the fish, so it should be a clean pass from head to tail resulting in a small steak.

How to peel a fish

By learning how to clean the fish, some also learn to remove the skin. Catfish, the sculpin and other fish that feed on the bottom usually be skinned. These are the steps:

1. Hold the catfish head firmly on a flat surface with forceps; it’s a good idea to cut the thorns before skinning.
2. Cut through the skin flaps behind the head and the chest.
3. Use tongs to remove the skin of the body, pulling the head to the tail.
4. Hold the fish head with one hand and with the other body, and breaks the spine in the head.
5. He pulls the head and guts out of the body skin.
6. Washed in clean water and the fish is ready to cook.