Catfish Cleaning Tips for Beginners and Experts

[Stonewall]

Caught a large catfish?
On catfish over 12lbs I always hang them up and cut their tails before gutting them. This bleeds the fish making it weaken, eventually killing it. This is beneficial because it makes a large fish easier and safer to handle when cleaning it. Also, this process also 'drains' the blood out of the meat, making it more tasty later on.

Lots of Cats...so little Time
If you have the luck of catching several cats and find that they keep flopping off your cleaning table, you could build a lip around the edges of your cleaning table to prevent this; or you could stun the fish. Catfish have the ability to lock their dorsal and pectoral fins and that causes the fins to become very rigid and dangerous, espicially if they flop. I was taught that if you have several cats on the table and find that they are indeed jumping off to hit them in the head with a rock or hammer. This stuns them instantly making the fish much more safer to work around.

Getting the Lead Out
Ever find that no matter how you fillet a catfish and/or cook it, there's always a bad taste left in your mouth? Try this:
After skinning a catfish, fillet it. Then remove the silver-skin on the outside of the fillet (where the skin was) using your fillet knife. After doing this, take your fillet knife and follow the red/rust colored 'vein' along the length of the fillet. I like to make a small 'V' on each side of it to remove it. This will help with taste-issues. It is how we have always prepared catfish.

There are many people in the world that have turned up their noses to eating catfish simply because the fish was not prepared correctly.

Original post by Nathan8372