How To Fillet A Sturgeon

the first thing that we're going to do is remove the scoots on the sides and the back and we cut them off the back because it actually exposes the line that you cut down and this this last one on the heads kind of tough to get off you're going to have to put a little pressure on it remove the fins so we got to cut around now I'm putting I put quite a bit of pressure on this to get these diamonds off but if you hold your knife flat you're not going to cut into the fish you hold that knife flat and straight and they'll come right off with without cutting in Andy why do you cut the scoots off the reason you cut them off is because when you go to skin it that the scoots will actually push push down into the meat when you lay the meat on the table and then the knife will catch on everyone as you're skinning it and you'll end up cutting through the skin and that really puts an extra twist on your on your skinny so that's how we prepare I want to show you this line here that we're going to cut down right here you see this where you've got white and then yellow then white that's the line that we cut down and I start right here at the at the dorsal fin and I'm going to start right there and I'm only going to cut in about a quarter of an inch just to get my cut started and I'm going to cut both sides I'm going up on that line and again just going down about a quarter of an inch now I'm going to come back through and I'm going to go I'm straight down with the knife absolutely perfectly straight down and just go a quarter of an inch at a time absolutely straight once you get down there about a half an inch you can actually angle that knife a little bit against against that Center make sure that you keep going straight down and eventually what you do is you start hitting the top of the ribs you can feel the knife go on tap tap tap tap tap to tap on on the top of the ribs on both sides if you open that up you can actually see that the ribs start to go out and so you get it to that point then with just a little extra pressure you go right through the rib cage on each side and you end up like this where you're opening this thing up and you've separated the ribs on both sides at this point I turn it over cut around the gill plate poke my knife through and come right down to the tail and cut that off get going through the ribs it lays open like that then you come back through your knife and just cut through that little stomach liner if you hold this thing up to the light you can actually see that white line there that's the very very dead center of the belly and it's paper-thin and that will just cut right off like that there's your one side when you flip it over this sides already started there's no guesswork flopping around you you where this is actually completely separated here just put your knife in there and go right down the back there and one rib there that didn't cut flip that side over and again just cut through that stomach liner and your fillet is off and you've got you didn't cut the head you didn't got it everything is there intact okay so then you flip this thing over and right at the where the fin is there this is where the anal is you just cut that off and you cut right down the edge of those diamonds and you cut that little belly strip off there's nothing there by the time you skin each side you're not wasting any meat there's just nothing there safe the same thing here I'm just going to cut right down that diamond line right past that fin get rid of all that skin it we're just going to go through it here like you would any other fish and remove the skin now there are some other some tricks to it that you want to you want to put some pressure on this I'm going to I'm pulling on this tail putting a lot of pressure on it and almost as much pressure pulling on the skin as pushing on the knife and just kind of walk it through there and it will come right off of there now the way I like to do it is I leave the ribcage on this side because it's supports it supports this meat while you're trimming the red meat if you cut the ribs off first this will concave and it makes it very hard to trim that off and what I'm going to do is pull on this kind of you know straighten it out I'm going to hold a little bit of pressure on there I'm using a very flexible knife that bends and where this bend at the bottom of the curve is where it's going to cut and I'm going to push down on this again I'm going to keep the knife very flat if you get it at an angle you're going to cut into the meat if you get it up you're going to pop it up through but if you keep it very flat and just give it a little tiny seesaw little action and then control right where the deepest part of the bend is and you can walk that knife right down it take that whole thing off at a little paper thin strip and it just goes from red to white on a paper thin strip and then I'm going to follow I'm going to follow that edge and I'm just going to keep cutting down Andy why do you take the fat off the fat has a very strong fishy taste to it and it's just overpowering and just with just make it really taste fishy you take if you get this read off and you don't have to get every tiny little speck off but you get the bulk of it off and it improves the quality of the fish a thousand times and then I also cut from the tail to the head there is a bit of agreeing to this meat and it seems to come off smoother and nicer if you're going from tail to the head but the last little bit of the tail here you have to spin it around and and and get that stuff it's this the hardest part is the it's the tip of the tail that read kind of ingrained is pretty deep in there now the centerline then we're going to wedge this centerline out and I'm going to keep my knife flat you're not going to cut into it like this you'll cut into it too deep keep your knife I mean my handle is actually going to right against the skin and I'm going to cut in there at about about a forty-five and I'm just going to walk it right down like that I'm going to turn it over on this side and do the same thing and then sometimes you got to cut through there second time but you wedge that out you don't want to cut too deep you can always go back through and and hit it a second time if you don't cut deep enough but you don't want to cut too deep that your first pass and end up wasting a lot of your good you know good quality meat so at this point I'm going to flip it over and take these ribs off I'm going to switch places but I can only cut one way again I'm going to lay that knife as flat as I can and I'm going to catch right under the rib and just pull it along the rib and just make a couple of lengthy cuts down here and I put in I'm actually putting a lot of pressure on that knife and the more pressure I put on it the shallower it cuts if you don't put enough pressure on it you could it'll eat or walk walk into the meat or a pop-up through but the more pressure you put on it it'll actually stay flat and that's the ribs and then again same thing here I'm just going to walk that down trim that off if it's red this is the front this is the front shoulder where that main the pectoral fin is and you want to cut that little chunk of red off trim up any of your little bits of remaining stomach liners this is the fletching off of the dorsal fin but you end up with a nice fillet here if you want to hit any last little spots like you got a little spot like this the trick is is to make the that spot the highest spot so I'm going to put the fish in my hand and I'm going to curl it up and make that spot high and then I'm just going to shave that right off of there almost like peeling a potato and I and I just shaved that off without without gouging or taking any same thing here is one little spot right there I'm going to raise that make that the highest spot in the need I just feel it just like you're peeling a potato that's a pretty clean piece of me you

Channel: Total Fisherman

Views: 1,244,221

Rating: 4.0746188 out of 5

Keywords: sturgeon fishing, how to fillet a sturgeon, filleting sturgeon, cleaning a sturgeon, skinning sturgeon

Id: s8trej9vPgQ

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 08 2010