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So you caught a catfish: now what?
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Signing UpStep 1Acquire a catfish
Get yourself a catfish. There are several methods:
1. Catch your own. Juglines/trotlines are a good way to catch these bottom-feeders; just make sure you're not fishing in a polluted or heavy-metal laden waterway. Each US state has its own report on this subject.
2. Get one from friends who fish, but usually catch-and-release because they're scared of cleaning fish. Bass fishermen are great for this; my uncle only keeps his fish when I come to visit.
3. Buy a live one. If you have a good Chinatown, farmers' market, or live near a fish farm, this may be easy. It's sad that you're missing out on a nice day at the lake or the river, but at least you have a live fish. This ~2.5lb fish came from the Old Oakland Farmers' Market. I was in line behind a bunch of tiny asian grandmothers waiting to buy live catfish.
4. Buy a dead one. This is a total cop-out, but sometimes the only option. Fishmongers and grocery stores standardly sell fillets, but good ones may sell you whole fish for waaaaay cheaper. Sometimes they're even pre-skinned for you. Note that "basa" is catfish from Thailand forcibly renamed by the US government.
1. Catch your own. Juglines/trotlines are a good way to catch these bottom-feeders; just make sure you're not fishing in a polluted or heavy-metal laden waterway. Each US state has its own report on this subject.
2. Get one from friends who fish, but usually catch-and-release because they're scared of cleaning fish. Bass fishermen are great for this; my uncle only keeps his fish when I come to visit.
3. Buy a live one. If you have a good Chinatown, farmers' market, or live near a fish farm, this may be easy. It's sad that you're missing out on a nice day at the lake or the river, but at least you have a live fish. This ~2.5lb fish came from the Old Oakland Farmers' Market. I was in line behind a bunch of tiny asian grandmothers waiting to buy live catfish.
4. Buy a dead one. This is a total cop-out, but sometimes the only option. Fishmongers and grocery stores standardly sell fillets, but good ones may sell you whole fish for waaaaay cheaper. Sometimes they're even pre-skinned for you. Note that "basa" is catfish from Thailand forcibly renamed by the US government.
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Tom Crawford.
This one would work... But if your cruel, you could try drowning them to kill them...
LOL.... couldn't resist XD
but yeah, i useually buy them, or smack them off a rock or something...
Caught a 40 pound flat and had him dressed and filleted in about 5 minutes
course, Ive been doing it most of my life, and I do it for extra money, IE I sell fish at work, and typically cover the cost of my gear fuel etc and still put money in my pocket.
For anyone reading this, get a metal coat hanger, a pair of needle nose vise grips if you do not have access to skinning pliers, run the coat hanger though the gills out the mouth, and hang him about eye level on something very sturdy. Grab the tail and cut it off completely at the end of the spine. (this drains the blood and keeps the meat cleaner tasting) Take a new razor blade and cut just below the skull bone all the way around the head (RUB the head hard with your finger, you'll feel the bone) make a slit at the dorsal fin and or break and remove the fin totally, grab the skin at the cut and pull down very hard while firmly holding the meat up behind the skin to keep from losing it pull the skin all the way down as if you are removing a sock. rip open the stomach and gut it, remove stomach meat and save. break off head at skull base and fillet with a very thin and flexible fillet knife you can clean 20 to 30 fish an hour depending on skill and size smaller=easier
People who fillet regular scaled fish do it the way you describe, basically performing a second fillet step to remove the meat from the skin and doing a bit of scraping. I like to keep the skin on my fillets when I clean that type of fish, though, so never do it. The skin is tasty.
Catfish, though, has slimy skin that should definitely be removed. The above mentioned technique should work nicely on thin-skinned catfish, but I'm much more used to skinning and cleaning wild-caught thick-skinned spiny catfish so defaulted to the standard order of operations without much thought. It's probably rare to skin farm-raised catfish; certainly I'd only done it once before. The technique described in my instructable is more similar to the dissecting techniques used on some types of lab animals when you specifically don't do anything that resembles filleting.
Next time I clean one of these farm-raised ones I'll definitely fillet the skin off last!