How to Fillet a Bluegill in UNDER 45 SECONDS! (Anyone Can Learn!)

[@brucematula833]

Thanks man, I have filleted hundreds and hundreds of bluegill without using electric and I learned a little better technique here today! Bluegill are delicious and they are so much fun to catch on light Tackle! God bless

[@calebwistad]

Awesome! Glad you found it helpful!

[@Will7981]

You did a really good job on this video explaining this.👍🏻

[@calebwistad]

Thank you!

[@MrStanwillis]

The visual is great.

[@calebwistad]

Thanks! Glad you found it helpful.

[@clayton1439]

Gills are one of the best

[@calebwistad]

So good!

[@RussW.]

Another great video! Thx for sharing!

[@calebwistad]

Thanks!

[@Woodstock271]

Excellent tutorial on filleting a bluegill. Wish I would have known that as a kid in Wisconsin in the 70’s. We had a different technique that was way faster and way less precise. What was great about the 70’s is that your parents would show you once how to kill a caught bluegill, scale it, and hand a 10 year old boy a knife and send him to the screened-in fish cleaning shack with his baby sister to the mosquitoes already lived in. “How they getting in here Lisa?” “It’s the smell of blood, they pretty much live and breed in here. Every time you open the screen door the mosquitoes follow you in.” Good plan. But in Wisconsin you’re so used to mosquitoes and know the complete impossibility of keeping them at bay, you just slap away at them. I’ve actually killed way more mosquitoes than fish in Wisconsin. Goes with the territory. I’m on the pier at the cabin we rented on Pelican Lake and I’m going for bluegills, perch, and rock bass. Everything I caught was undersized and we kept them all. My baby sister would say, “I caught that one mom!” And mom made sure she could eat that one. But it was a lie. They all look exactly the same once breaded and fried. We had hundreds of little fish in the live well at the end of the pier. “Nice catch kids! Now go clean them like we showed you.” Slapping mosquitoes and cleaning mostly bluegills with my baby sister was really fun. Forget filleting a 3” bluegill, scale it, cut the head off remove the guts, meanwhile, gramma and my great aunt and parents are playing cards and getting drunk in the cabin. It was us kids who caught and provided dinner. That wasn’t celebrated, it was expected. “Of course you will. Failure is not an option. Try harder.” I loved that drive as a kid. You were loose and free, nobody cared if a bear charged you, just tell the damn story already. “Everyone has them. Yours is no more important than anyone else’s. You’re not even bleeding.” Yawn. Love your channel man. I miss my childhood up north.

[@calebwistad]

Thanks! It was a great place to grow up and a great place to raise kids of my own too!

[@Woodstock271]

@ , You’re a lucky man, Caleb. I don’t have any kids, I never met the right woman I thought might be forever. Maybe I was so used to being free and traveling all over the globe that I didn’t want to settle down. Either way, I did miss out on being able to take my son or daughter or both, out to the woods and teach everything I’ve learned about camping and fishing. I know my dad really enjoyed that with us kids. Keep up the nostalgic and educational videos. Have fun and stay safe my friend. Aloha from Seattle. 🤙🏼

[@Woodstock271]

I’m sorry, one more quick story about the musky and the wolverine. Booth Lake is a tiny lake in northern Wisconsin we used to go to on summer vacations. I don’t know how old I was, maybe four, but we’d been doing this forever since I was a baby. I do remember when this happened but I didn’t see it since when all hell broke loose my mom made me stay in the cabin. My baby sister was in a playpen or something so she’s safe. My dad is yelling, “Get the net Pat! Huge Musky!” All I remember is that mom didn’t get the net and wouldn’t help him. She was afraid of something I guess, and maybe that’s one reason they divorced when I was 9 but dad told me the whole story when I was old enough to understand it. I always fished with my dad but not really allowed to when he was fishing at night. I was too young, too loud, and I’d spook the fish away. It was a stealth mission for a musky. Five years later he was still pissed at my mom for this and told me the whole story. (Now I’m mad at mom too, but she was scared so whatever). Dad had hooked up to a 48 or so inch Musky and was getting it to the pier at night and screaming for a net my mom would not deliver. She thought he was being attacked by a bear so she wanted no part of that and decided to protect her kids in the cabin instead. That’s honorable I guess but she failed him on such a simple net request. Dad couldn’t pull the giant musky onto the pier with just his 50 pound mono, so he jumped in the water and grabbed the tired fish and shoved it onto the pier. Mission accomplished. He thought. A Wolverine was obviously watching this from the woods and decided it was his musky. My dad was trapped at the end of the pier by this growling serious Wolverine, and he didn’t have a gun, so he’s screwed and let the wolverine drag his musky off the pier and into the woods. Ya know, a Musky is a trophy fish. Nobody eats them, they hang them on the wall. I’m glad my dad made the right decision in not fighting a wolverine for a musky. He would lose that fight and survived decades beyond, to many more life-threatening adventures he still survived. Sailing around the South Pacific with my dad was indescribable and beautiful. Scary, rough, hard, and sometimes on calm seas with no wind, extremely boring. A month at sea seems like a year on a 30 foot Tahiti Ketch. Becalmed in the doldrums between the U.S. and Hawaii is just hell. It’s like a lake. A duck pond a thousand miles from California, and another thousand plus to Hawaii. This is where we repaired whatever damage happened during the storms. This is where all that trash circles in the great garbage patch that just swirls in the Pacific Ocean. Still a thousand miles to go to Hawaii. After drifting backwards a couple hundred miles in this current line for a week, we eventually caught the trade winds that brought us to Hawaii. Then Tahiti. And beyond. My regrets are few in this life. I never hurt anyone and helped many. I’ve also been helped by strangers and new people I meet from wherever. My life on the sea was beautiful and really made me who I am, but now I’m old and kinda crippled, and really enjoy watching your videos from northern Wisconsin. I have some beautiful memories from the north woods and really appreciate your keeping them alive here.

[@jasonborn867]

Your method is faster, but on such small fish I try getting every scrap of meat. I slit the belly first then my head cut curves around gill plate down just behind the pectoral fin to intersect the belly slit. I then follow your top dorsal cut and slice through the tall meat separating the fillet. This method gets all the belly meat and behind the pectorals for a larger fillet.

[@calebwistad]

Hmm. Might have to try that some time!

[@jasonborn867]

@@calebwistad It's more work, but I find scaling them and then filleting with skin on adds more weight plus the skin gets super crispy when frying in hot oil. Do you ever leave the skin on?

[@JohnJohnson.94]

So much cleaner than I’m used to. No blood or anything. I might have to try this with the next fish fry I do.

[@calebwistad]

Yes. It helps a ton to slit the gills while the fish are in a bucket of water before you clean them too!

[@mrhalfstep]

I do it just like you. On small gills, I might stop after cutting back through the tail and flip the fish before I remove the first fillet and repeat, just because having the fillet under the second side seems to support it and lets me get a little more meat on my second fillet. Could just be my imagination, but I do it because I want every bit of meat from these delicious fish. I don't know if your knife was a Rapala or not, but it was clearly the same shape. One of those with a 5 or 6 inch blade is perfect for small bream, IMHO. If you ever get a mess of really small gills, you can make short work of them with a small Rapala and, though they may be too small to bread and fry, they sure are good just dropped into some simmering water for a minute and served with cocktail sauce like shrimp.

[@calebwistad]

Yep. It was the 6” Rapala Superflex.

[@rohlfing63]

Rather than cutting through at the tail to remove the fillet, I cut nearly through and flip the fillet with the tail attached, makes it easier to hold while making that last cut to separate the skin

[@calebwistad]

Yes. I’ve tried that way and it works very well too. I just prefer to do it this way.

[@DodieDickerson-Stidman]

I don't clean them that small but ice fishing pounder and up summer time I have clean around three ponds we let them get bigger awesome tasting fish mildly

[@calebwistad]

Yes. They are tasty at any size.

[@joearcher71]

Sharp knife is key,so many fisherman don't seem to ever have a sharp knife

[@calebwistad]

So true!

[@comlbbeau]

That's exactly how I do it... However, I usually fillet only those bluegills that are about 3/4 lb. or larger. The smaller ones I de-scale them, remove the head and entrails and cook them whole. The skin imparts a tasty flavor you don't get with the filleted ones.

[@calebwistad]

They are great either way. I don’t know where you are fishing and consistently catching 3/4 pound bluegills but around here a 1 pounder is a trophy size fish and 3/4 pounders are rare. I don’t typically even keep them once they get over about 9” to let them have a chance to grow as big as possible.

[@comlbbeau]

@@calebwistad I have a 1 1/4 acre pond behind my house where I have consistently fed the bluegill high protein pellets off the dock for the last 25 years, and, whereas a 3/4 lb. bluegill isn't an everyday catch, I do catch them pretty regularly. I seldom catch any under a half pound on RoadRunners, and the biggest was a 12", 1 lb. 13 oz. bluegill. Loads of fun and a wonderful meal, to boot!

[@kennethwatt3491]

Have the Fish been Fleeced or Scaled first ?

[@comlbbeau]

Not necessary since the skin is removed on the last step.

[@calebwistad]

No, it would be redundant to scale them because you are removing all the scales with the skin using this method.

[@351cleveland8]

That’s my favorite fish to eat 👍

[@calebwistad]

Way better than crappies, that’s for sure.

[@351cleveland8]

@ Lol I agree

[@kaelsaxe]

Didn't know you could tickle the ribs with the knife on a bluegill like that. Probably be better than me sawing through the rib cages and sometimes sawing through too much cage on one side and not enough on the other ... 😀

[@calebwistad]

Yep. Just a little more knife work and you don’t have to mess with the ribs at all.

[@judyjohnson7392]

This is from Dave: I've been cleaning bluegill and other fish like that for the last several years, I can fillet hundred gills in less than a hour and the next hour frying them LoL

[@calebwistad]

That’s awesome. Gotta love bluegill for dinner!

[@squirrellydan1277]

I'll actually keep some gills from now on, 👍

[@calebwistad]

Nice!👍

[@dougsmith5946]

Leave it attached to the tail. Then flip and take off meat.

[@calebwistad]

You can do it that way for sure if it’s faster for you. I can fillet them faster doing it this way.

[@permitfisher]

Good video

[@calebwistad]

Thanks!

[@clayton1439]

Splitting the tail...

[@calebwistad]

What is splitting the tail?

[@albertlovshin7791]

The picture is no good

[@calebwistad]

Which picture is that?

[@pesto12601]

that hole in the filet is disappointing and isn't that a lot of meat still left on the body? Ramsey would be screaming.. YOU DONKEY.... do it AGAIN!!

[@calebwistad]

That rib meat is paper thin on a bluegill this size. Really nothing there to miss where that little hole is. And no, there isn’t much meat left on the body. You could certainly scrape up some more meat if you cooked the fish whole, but that’s not the point of this video.

[@pesto12601]

@@calebwistad cool. thx for explaining.

[@Black-March]

Good vid, but a better knife would've made it easier. :)

[@calebwistad]

Got any recommendations? I’ve had great luck with these knives myself.

[@Black-March]

@@calebwistad Global G30, Swedish Fillet Knife is my choice, but there's a lot of good ones out there. The blade is sharper and thinner than yours and the flex helps with getting nicer fillets.

[@joshuasweet1532]

You do have to remove them pin bones ....don't leave them bones in them fillets for yur kids and wive to choke on

[@calebwistad]

On larger fish yes, that is true. If you fry these little 8” gills up the pin bones are so small they cook right out though.

[@joshuasweet1532]

@calebwistad I eat atleast a hundred gills a year ....I love em ....2 times better than crappy