The Only NORTHERN PIKE FILLET Tutorial You'll Ever Need!

what's going on guys today I'm going to show you my favorite two methods for filling a northern pike and you might be asking yourself right now what does a bottle of white vinegar have to do with laying northern pike well I'm glad you asked because I'm going to show you that tip and a whole bunch of other ones and this might be the very last video you need to watch on how to fillet a northern pike so guys the reason I'm making this video is Pike is one of my favorite fish to eat and a lot of guys shy away from them because of the bones and the Slime and they don't want to deal with that and the guys that do keep them sometimes struggle with filling them properly to get a boneless fillet so this is for you guys who do keep Pike and for you guys who have been throwing them back I want you to understand that this is one of the best eating fish in fresh water they have super firm flesh it's really really flavorful and you can actually bake it you can broil it you can blacken it and it holds together much better than walleye or panfish so let's get over each one of these three hurdles the Slime the bones and the flavor so number won the Slime that is what this vinegar is for we're actually going to de-slime these fish before we even put them on the fillet table so we don't have to deal with that at all then I'll show you my favorite two methods for boneless Pike fillets you don't have to worry about those bones once you understand how they lay in the filet they're actually really easy to take out and number three the flavor the fishy flavor I'm going to show you a few tips throughout this video about how to prepare and take care of these fish so you get the best flavor possible so let's get started let's get these things de-slimed all right guys as you can see I got a couple Pike here and these are the ones we're going to be cleaning today and I'm just going to take my white distilled vinegar here and we're going to be pouring this into the water now before we do that I want to explain what I did was I bled these fish out iced them overnight I just removed the ice and put some cold water into the sink over the top of the fish so I have lots more tips on after the catch care in a video I'll leave a link right here for it if you want to watch that but that's basically all I did with these fish so I like to get them nice and chilled on Ice before I do this so we're going to take that distilled vinegar now and we're going to pour about one to two cups into the water so I'm just gonna guess on that that's probably one two cups right there so now I'm going to actually turn the water back on here for a little bit just to get that mixed up kind of spray it around a little bit so now guys we're just going to let this the fish soak in this cold water for about 30 minutes and what's going to happen is that slime coat on a northern pike is actually very alkaline and the acid in the vinegar is going to break that slime coat down it's going to completely break it down so all we have to do is just wash it off and it'll come right off the fish all right guys you so you can see here a lot of the Slime has actually come off these fish already but what I'm going to do is just take a scrub brush and that's going to get the rest off so you can see that kind of whitish film on the back as soon as I start scrubbing that it just comes right off so I'm just going to scrub that whole fish in the water here just like so get that slime coat right off of them just like that that's pretty much it he's a very slime free at this point it's time to fillet these Pike but before we do I want you to have some understanding of what a y bone is and where it lies inside of a pike fillet that's what we're going to be taking out is that y bone we're looking at a cross section of this entire fish right here so it'd be the fillet laying on the table and we've cut it in half and this is what you would see so this would be the belly this would be the back of the fish and this would be that y bone so this is the lateral line roughly right in here and the Y bone starts just on this side of it comes down makes a turn and then also goes up to the skin right here and ties in right there and that's why they call it a y bone so our filet when we take this off we're going to be following this side of the Y bone until we hit right here and you'll feel the blade ticking along the tops of all those y-bones then we're going to turn our knife and come this way and fillet off this chunk right here and that's going to come out then we're going to come on this side of the Y and cut right here on this side all the way down and out and that's going to remove that y bone portion of the fillet and completely leave us with a boneless fillet at that point so let's hop into it I'll show you how to fillet these fish including that method right now all right guys the first method I'm going to show you for filleting a pike is the way I learned to do it and we're going to take this fillet off first of all by going over the rib bones and then we will continue to fillet the fish and take the y-bones out so first cut we make is right behind the head here just like you would on a walleye or a bass or any panfish and then the difference between a pike and a walleye is there's no dorsal fin to follow so you kind of have to look down the center of the pike there's a little divot and that's the backbone we want to stay just on this side on the upper side of that backbone as we come through so we're just gonna slice just on this side of it as we move down the back you can kind of see the bones right there where they come from the spine and you want to stay just this side of them all the way down to this fin right here okay then we can actually follow those bones right in once we get to this fin all we have to do is push all the way through like so angle the knife down towards the spine and just follow it all the way out to the tail and cut through see that now we're just going to continue cutting right along those bones like so and right about here you're going to feel your knife cutting through those y bolts but we're going to go up and over the ribs we're not going to cut through the ribs and then once we get over the ribs you can kind of angle down along the ribs to get that little bit of belly meat right there now we're just going to Simply cut that off now see that fillet has very very little blood or guts or slime or anything on it it's super super clean just white very clean meat so we'll put this guy aside for now and see I got a little bit of guts on the table this next method I'm going to show you is going to eliminate that completely too but I always squeegee those guts off if I do get any on the table so now I always skin my Pike fillets before I take the Y bones out in this method the next method I'm going to show you how to do it a little bit different but so when I skin fish I always bring them right to the edge of the table because then I can get my knife nice and low and we're going to come along so here's one of the keys to getting good tasting Pike I'm not going to cut super super deep here I'm going to skim and just leave a little bit of meat on the skin I'm going to take it slow and kind of guide my knife not all the way down to the table so go all the way across the whole filet but not cutting all the way through down to the skin just like that and see by cutting shallow I leave all this red that's the bloodline that's the fat that stays with the skin instead of on my filet and that's the part that can give it a fishy flavor so I get rid of that with one cut right there so you can see actually I I cut a little bit deep right here and I left a little bit I can actually just trim that off just like that and that is really really clean now super clean fillet now we're going to flip it back over to the other side and face the filet towards us and this is the part where we're going to take the Y bones out now the Y bones you can actually feel them with your finger running along here and that's just those little tip sticking out of the top of the Y and we're going to follow that line with our knife and we're going to stay on this side of the line of Bones so I can see them right here and I'm just going to cut down and you'll meet resistance about halfway through the fillet and that's where the bone turns this way so you don't want to push through you just want to slice through that meat that really thin meat just like that and you'll feel that resistance right there don't go any further than that just keep following those bones down the fish like so okay all the way almost to the tail just like that and you hear that that's those bones that's where they turn that's that's my knife ticking along the top of them that's what you don't want to cut through because now what we're going to do is we're going to turn our knife at an angle and follow those bones out to the end of the fillet right here now you can see those bones right there that's what we're trying to cut out so we keep going keep going and the next method I'm going to show you how to keep this all one piece but this is the easiest method and the quickest for me so we'll roll all the way down the tail like that and we can actually cut the tail off just this little bit at the end there's no eye bones in that now there's no y bones in that whole entire loin that's completely free of Bones super clean no slime no guts I just cut those in half typically we'll set those aside now obviously we still have bones in this part so you can see this lateral line right here this is kind of where the meat naturally separates all the way down the middle of fish I can actually kind of almost separate it with my fingers we're going to put our knife right there we're going to try and line our our knife blade up with the underside of these bones so I'm just going to kind of go straight across and I can actually see once I get through here you can see my knife tip see that see it coming through on the underside of those bones just like that now we're going to skin those bones out all the way down the fillet just coming right underneath them like that and you lose almost no meat at all if you do this correctly just like that see how they peel right off of there all the way down just like so I'm going to trim off this really thin stuff on the edge now that is completely bone free if I have some stragglers like that I'll just clean them up I like to clean the ends up a little bit but that that piece is completely bone free now if I'm going to fry this up I like to just cut it into some you know edible portions like so so we can stick them in the deep fryer but that's your basic boneless method right there and that's the Y bones there's almost no lost meat there whatsoever really thin piece super easy all right I already did one side of this Pike but I'm going to use this as a demonstration for method number two so let's pretend this Pike is still whole what I'm going to do is I'm going to slice in just behind the fin right here I'm going to remove the belly meat down right about where the white meets the green I'm going to take off these two fins right here just like so and then I would come around the other side do the same thing take out that strip of belly and then I'm going to actually remove the guts from the fish at this point so we'll pull them right out and this is going to leave you with very very little mess at all so we do that do a little squeegee job and now we can take our electric fillet knife or actually take this whole side off of this Pike just like so straight down to the backbone and then we're actually going to go through the ribs on this one so I'm going to reach across grab the head here we're going to follow that backbone all the way down right through the ribs all the way down to the tail and through see that now the ribs are still in there but on a smaller Pike especially this is going to be critical because you're going to get more meat off of it so now before I do anything else I'm going to just take that rib cage out with my knife here and you'll see how much more meat we can actually get by doing it this way see on the other one I was it was real thin around the belly and around the rib portion this way see how much more meat there is there works really slick okay so there's that now in this case I'm not actually going to skin it first I'm going to fillet the Y bones first so I can see them right here they're running right along here I can feel them with my hand same thing same way as the last method as far as this goes so far we're going to follow those down just like that you can hear that knife ticking then we're going to turn it out and instead of cutting all the way out we're just going to hit the end of those wide bones and cut down to the skin because they do stop just before the edge of the fish there so we'll hit the end and go down to the skin just like that okay and go all the way to the end of the tail here just like that so we'll see there it went right to the skin on that and now we got gonna cut down and across down and across just like we did on the other one like so right on that lateral line take those y bones right out just like that now we can actually flip that line back over and now we can skin it again you don't want to go too deep with your cut go a little bit shallow to avoid some of that fatty bloodline tissue just like that and now it's all in one piece so no guts no blood one piece of meat super super clean and uh hard to beat it's good stuff I'm ready to eat some Pike there we go guys a nice bag of fish for a fish fry and you know the Slime doesn't bother me so I don't do that extra step to take the Slime off personally but if you're finicky about slime it does work and it's a great way to do it and the other two methods I showed you are just easy ways to get meat off of a pike nice and cleanly so hopefully you enjoyed this video if you did like leave a comment subscribe I appreciate it guys watch another video right here we'll catch you later get hooked up [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: hookedupwi

Views: 1,383,382

Keywords: northern pike, fishing, fillet, how to fillet, how to clean a northern pike, clean, catch and cook, northern, pike, slime, de-slime, fillet knife, filleting fish, how to clean fish, how to fillet a northern, how to clean a northern

Id: -xRPz_avl7o

Length: 16min 39sec (999 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023