Filet Techniques

[Stever]

As much as I love to catch walleye, I also love to sit down to a dinner of fresh walleye. However, in my limited experience, I do my best to catch most of the bones, but I still don't quite get them all out. Can any of you experienced filet specialists describe or suggest ways to get to that boneless (or 99% boneless) filet?

Thanks,

Stever

[Mick]

Lay the fish down on a flat surface. Take your filet knife, and with the blade pointing to the front of the fish, very near the head and along the backbone...make an incision and cut the skin away from the backbone until you reach a point on top of the head that meets bone. Trun you knife around and slice down just behind the gill to the belly. Remove your knife and go back to the incision on top. Carefully with the tip of your knife slice your way down the backbone to the tail. DON'T CUT THE SKIN FROM THE TAIL. Go back to the head on the fish and with your knife, slice the meat as close to the ribcage as you can. Use your thumb to help separate the meat from the bone. Keep your thumb back from the blade though. Follow the meat past the ribcage to the tail...going deeper as the bones dissapear. AGAIN...DON'T REMOVE THE FILLET FROM THE TAIL.
Now you should have a piece of filet attached only by the tail. Flip the filet so that the meat is up and the skin is down. Take you knife and placing it at the tail...turn it sideways and cut the filet off of the skin. Hold the fillet with your fingers at the tail to keep it from moving while you cut away from yourself. Repeat the process on the other side.

[Beaver]

More than one way to skin a cat.
Step 1: Lay fish flat on side. Take electric filet knife and cut down behind gill plate til you hit backbone and stop.
Step2: Turn knife 90 degrees. Cut from head to tail using slight downward pressure against backbone. Don`t cut through skin at tail.
Step 3: Flip filet over. Use skin connected at tail to hold onto. With enough downward pressure to slightly bend the blade, remove meat from skin. You now have one filet with the ribs still in it. Toss that filet in cold water and do the other side.
Step 4: Take filet out of water and lay on table. Find lateral line at the rear of filet. Normally it`s a little dark brown strip, you`ll see it. Make two 1 inch cuts, one above and one below the lateral line. You are now ready to "zipper" the fine lateral line bones out of the filet. Grab the top portion of the filet at the tail and slowly "peel" it forward removing the top strip of the filet.
Step 5: Grab the end of the lateral line where you made the 2 cuts. Take that skinny little piece containing the fine lateral line bones and pull it slowly forward from the tail, over the rib cage and tearing it all the way off of the remaining piece of filet. It looks like a zipper and it contains all of those pesky little fine "hair bones".
Step 6: Remove the rib cage from the bottom half of the filet.

You are left with 2 completely boneless strips of walleye.

[Bottomfeeder]

The above technique sounds good to me but would add one step, especially if the fish was a larger fish, say over 17". If you look at the filetts after the skin is off, you will notice that each has a red lateral line going down the center. This line also containes a row of small bones. Simply cut a slit on each side of this line starting at the tail of each filett. Then grab the little piece you have just created, and pull towards the rest of the filtet. The lateral line of the filette will "zip" out and each filette will become 2 parts. I have been zipping my filetts for years and not only does it get rid of that line of bones, but it removes the latteral line improving the tast of the fish. As good as walleyes are, this makes them taste even better.

[Bottomfeeder]

Beaver - Great minds think alike

[Salmon Seeker]

I've used the zipper method on walleyes (after seeing it at Port Clinton last year). Does it work on other species like trout or salmon or northern?? I haven't tried it on them, but I would think it works....

[Stever]

I think these lateral line bones were the ones that I difficult in getting out. Thanks for the info. A follow-up question: A slit 1" above and below the lateral line - how deep should this slit be? 1/8'', 1/4"?

Thanks again fellas,

Stever