Thursday was a good day. Some folks don’t care for sheepshead, but I think they are delicious. After much practice, I finally got to where I can filet them fairly well and fairly quickly. They seemed to be everywhere we stopped, especially around rocks near a channel. Sheepshead were caught on live shrimp and dead shrimp. Trout were caught on plastic and live shrimp. I was fishing a ledge that dropped from 2’ to 8’ pretty quickly. My boat was in about 2’ of water and we were casting into about 8-10’ . While they lasted we were throwing live shrimp on a Carolina Rig and working it back up that ledge. When the live shrimp died, we fished dead shrimp and plastic.
Do you fillet the trout with a fillet knife like a bass or do you cut up and over the rib cage. I’ve been filleting my trout with a fillet knife but cutting through the ribs then trimming them out. Seems to get more meat that way.
I’ve yet to catch a keeper sheepshead but the smaller ones I’ve caught fight like a son of a gun.
When fileting a trout, I use an electric filet knife (American Angler). I lay the trout on its back, and I hold its head with my left hand. I cut straight down right about his A hole and go about to its backbone. Then I turn and go toward its head, stopping right about its gills (just short of my fingers). Then, it one motion, I turn the trout on its side and go back down the length of the fish. With the blade, I flip that filet over and continue that left to right motion and complete the filet. I flip the trout over and filet the other side. If that doesn’t make sense, I’ll make a video…if you’re interested.
The next time I go fishing, I’ll make a short video of the way I filet a trout. That’s being a bit optimistic on my part, as there’s no guarantee I’ll catch one next time.
Actually, when I was thinking about making that trout cleaning video, I thought about all the sheepshead I’ve fileted recently and thought I might just do a sheepshead cleaning video, also. Trust me, I’m NO expert, but I have cleaned a lot of sheepshead fairly recently. I’m sure it would not meet everyone’s approval, but as with the trout, when you’re faced with cleaning as many as I am cleaning, expediency becomes as important, if not more important, as getting every possible morsel of meat off the bones. I’ll see what I can do about making those videos.
Yeah, if I’m going to harvest a fish, I’m going to make sure I get as much meat as possible. Ive notice that on a redfish the spine is very thick and if you try to fillet it in a traditional “bass” type manner, you’ll leave too much meat on both sides. Plus, like an earlier poster said, you’ll blow a breaker just getting through the ribs. These inshore fish are very time consuming to clean. Not trout so much but redfish and black drum are very time consuming if you are concerned with getting all the meat.
Thats how I do catfish. Cut them into steaks with a sawzall, use a knife to fillet the skin on each side of the back bone, & then cut off the meat. No waste & you got a mess of fish nuggets.
The way I clean trout, I cut out the bellies, put 'em in zip lock bags, and freeze them. In the spring/summer, I thaw them out and use them for bait. Red Snapper love trout bellies. That’s better than buying frozen pogies or frozen squid.
Kerry Browning…and anyone else…if you’d like to see a video of how I clean trout, send me a text message, and I’ll send it to your cell phone. My cell number is 931-607-8784, or if you have a Facebook page, I might be able to send it to you as a private Facebook message.
I’m not sure this will work on here, but this is a link to a video of buddy of mine at my fishing camp. He’s showing how we filet trout. Again. I’m not sure this will work.
Yep, that’s the way we do it. That’s not the actual video I made of my buddy and my camp cleaning trout, but it’s the same method…and as I said earlier, I save the bellies and use them for bait when snapper season opens. In my video, my buddy filets the trout from start to finish in about 10 seconds.
