How to fillay a catfish and trim red meat off.

good evening we're on down outdoor adventures down the outdoorsman here uh i had a request from my brother he wanted me to filet up some catfish and uh do it from start to finish i know years ago when i was growing up we uh cleaned uh catfish we skinned them out with a pair of pliers and uh some people tacked them onto a tree and just grabbed them with the skinners and pull the skin down and then we would uh stake them out probably about that thick with the bone in and you know back then we weren't wasting no kind of fish we was blessed to get fish and uh when we got it we tried to eat every part of it uh over time i've learned that that's not the best way to eat catfish uh due to the mud vein and the the fat that's on it so you have to trim the red meat off of there till you come down to the white portion of the meat and uh that's to me that's the better part of the catfish but the old timers they still like to stake it out which is fine but uh over the time over time i've learned to uh cut them up for lay them up then uh i don't skin them no more because i found that it's a lot easier and quicker to use an electric filet knife to skin them out you just cut them down that fillet and uh flip it and then go back over to take that skin off with the electric filet knife so that's what i'm gonna show you this evening a friend of mine brought me some nice big catfish uh over and uh i said well that was my day off but i don't mind this kind of work so i make it look easy and it's it's pretty easy to me always wear your rubber gloves when you're doing any kind of fish wild animals because you don't know what kind of bacteria might be on them that can get into your bloodstream so you want to be careful with that that's why i always try to wear gloves rubber gloves and i got two electric knives here one is the uh electric uh fisherman mr twister you can see that and then this is one made by berkeley i had it not berkeley but rapala you can see rapula on there and it's uh it's a good filet knife i'm still looking for that really powerful not filet knife and i got my old trusty filet knife that's razor sharp so i'm gonna be doing a little bit of both with it and see what we can come up with i know sometimes people uh forget about how to operate the blades on this thing it's got a blade release this thing right here you got to push it and your blades hopefully will go in place like they should and click they clicked in place they're in there they're not coming out so we're ready to cut up some fish so let's see what we can do right quick another trick tip uh a tip i like to use is just using an old rag because that that fish will slip on you sometime but this old rag will keep him in place and you can go ahead and do the work so we're gonna try to get this old camera set up locked down and we're gonna get busy we're gonna start out with mr channel nice channel cat that we got there and i like to uh i like to start right here where that that uh that little hook behind this door this fin here is right here so you just make a cut down until you hit those ribs and back bones then you come back across the top here so i'm gonna come down curve it around and try to work my way down you see i'm working down that straight down the spine there then i want to punch it through down by this fin come through there with it and i'm through there then just follow that spine that backbone just like that then you can flip that meat over there it is right there just come back up in here and trim again and i'm just going down the side of that rib cage can you see that yeah right alongside there and there's the fillet right there we're going to do this other side you do the same thing come over here on this side of the that dorsal fin i try to stay close as i can to it come up by the head turn it go down and then i'm going down the side of the rib right there above that belly fin then i punch it through then just follow that spine come down again and just trim that meat off and there you have it i don't like messing with the belly meat because that's what we grew up on thinking we had some good catfish when it really was just uh belly meat of the catfish and they call that catfish nuggets and i'm gonna show you what it looks like just to get you an idea so you know the difference in the meat so right here i'm gonna go down here and cut this off it's gonna get a little messy but i'm gonna cut right above the ribs okay we're gonna throw this carcass away in the bucket all right now that's all fat right there but this right here y'all remember that grade that we seen on the catfish we thought we was eating but you can come down here with your fillet knife and do the same thing you cut down and turn it and just go like that and there you go this is what they call nuggets that's kind of what it looked like in the package when you got it when you was younger but i don't do that no more [Music] but what i'm gonna do right now is i'm gonna get these fillets ready i might have a little rear piece in it but you're gonna come back here and just put your fingers right here on the edge turn that knife and then just go just go up with it just like that flip it over there's the skin i ain't got to do no pulling i ain't got to do no pliers or none of that and what like i was saying you get this little piece off right here that red meat it's what's all the fat and everything in there you see all that that right there is red meat all that gray right there you want to trim all that off till you come down to the white meat so i'm gonna do that right now you can do with your filet knife or your regular knife so let's take it it's a light filet off of there and see there's white meat see that's all fat grease blood mud vein nasty right there is number meat right here you can trim again if you want to to get that out i do strips when i do my fish i cut it up in strips and i i get rid of all that so right here is another one that's kind of the fatty area here you just want to take that off i'm gonna get my other knife and see this is how i do my catfish i come down here on the side right here and i just cut just like that avoiding that mud vein see that's a nice little strip then i come back over here and cut that piece off that's where all the bad stuff is right there just cut all that out of the way and see that's another nice strip then i just come in here and cut strips like that [Music] see i got a bone right there so i'm gonna have to get that off there's a little rib bone i left on there so we're gonna get that out of there got it but that's a nice little strip right there that's that's what it that's what it's all about right there now i'm gonna do the other ones i cut that in a little close so i got some fin bone on there so i'm just gonna come back in come back right here get all that fin bone out and you can do the same thing with a sharp knife just like i did with the electric i'm going to take that skin off because we still got skin on that side so i'm gonna come in here put my fingers in here hold it and i'm just gonna work that knife back and forth pull the meat the skin as i go and there you have it there again i said trim all that off just like that get all that gray that red meat off of there you come down to the white meat then like i said you make strips getting all that red meat that mud thing off of there and there you have it that's how you fillet and skin out of catfish using electric fillet knife just like that there you have it number strips and that's how we do it on dawn outdoor adventures let me see if i can turn this thing there we go that's how we do it like i said the electrophilic filet knifes are great you can uh like i said you can get your work done a whole lot faster and uh it saves a lot of time and it's a lot easier than trying to skin a catfish out especially if you get a big catfish you got to do a lot of pulling i know when i was in chicago and i cleaned that big old blue cat man i was tired my arms were sore and everything because i had cleaned so many fish but that catfish really uh took its toll so but like i said i'm just trying to show you a little bit easier way you might gut a fish or two you might mess them up but you got to keep practicing at it to get good at it uh just like anything you got to practice at it but like i said that's how you uh fillet a catfish use an electric filet knife getting that red meat out getting that gray meat the mud thing getting all that stuff out the way cutting in the strips and then it'll eat a lot better all right we'll see you next time on dawn outdoor adventures cutting up catfish all right

Channel: Don the Outdoorsman

Views: 36,872

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Id: qE1-dG1DwdU

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021