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So I took my girls up to Montpelier reservoir yesterday and today for some perch fishing and it was about as fast as I could get a line down a hole it was being hit. What a Dilema, huh?
Thing is, I'm a believer in if you are getting tons of dinks then the herd needs to be thinned and as Idaho has no limit on perch we kept everything that came to the top. The perch averaged 6-9". Hopefully if more people keep a ton of them the size will get bigger.
So.... What do y'all do with the dinks if you keep them? I made chowder tonight after spending an hour and a half filleting the buggers and it was really good, but any other ideas to use them without wasting them?
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Anything smaller than 8.5-9" is bait. Just too much work getting a decent fillet off of them smaller than that.
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I had a similar experience at Starvation through the ice a few years ago. Me and a buddy both kept a limit of 50. I had some big enough to fillet. I found that a six or seven inch perch was better if kept whole. I cut the heads off, scaled em, and gutted them. Pretty much the same treatment I gave any and all species in the sunfish family that I caught as a kid (except for black bass). Seasoned cornmeal and hot grease and you got a fine meal. It is easier to eat fillets but for me, eating fish off the bone with the skin on is slap yo mama delicious.
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Oh those perch are plenty big to fillet, remember practice makes perfect. The more you challenge yourself, the better u get. I've filleted a 3in perch before perfectly without messing up the meat and perfectly straight. I do french style over the rib cage then I cut a small strip to remove the tiny lateral bones. I would say 4in and over is fillet-able lol. 6in is a prime filleter and it's unrealistic to expect a 50 limit of 10 to 12 inchers.
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Well, I do commercial quality fillets, but didn't know if I was the only masochist out there making use of the little ones. I just feel guilty throwing fish away if they can be utilized.
They tasted like trophies!
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[#0000FF]I too hate to waste good edible fish flesh. And I have kept and filleted a bunch of "bitty bites" over the years. Here are a few recipes I use to make good use of the small fillets.
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I'm with ya Wagdog. Last night I ate about 6 of those little suckers--no bigger than lLake Michigan smelt-- and it was a meal that was indeed 'slap yo mama' good. Not a bit of wasted meat and everyone can practice their filleting technique on cooked fish. Nary a bone if you do it right. I use egg wash and seasoned flour because it doesn't make a hard crust that is little more difficult to penetrate.
Can't let em go from the depth they came from so might as well enjoy.
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It depends on whether or not they can be released. If the perch come from deep water, I keep smaller fish as long as they are big enough to fillet. The small fillets can be fried quickly in a little olive oil and make good "Popcorn Perch".
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[quote fishday]I'm with ya Wagdog. Last night I ate about 6 of those little suckers--no bigger than lLake Michigan smelt-- and it was a meal that was indeed 'slap yo mama' good. Not a bit of wasted meat and everyone can practice their filleting technique on cooked fish. Nary a bone if you do it right. I use egg wash and seasoned flour because it doesn't make a hard crust that is little more difficult to penetrate.
Can't let em go from the depth they came from so might as well enjoy.[/quote]
Sounds excellent. My old standby is cornmeal but I'm not picky. Flour, corn flour, breadcrumbs, cracker crumbs, tempura, beer batters...I love em all. My Dad always referred to the smaller fish as a sweet meat treat.[  ]
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Yep yep! I with you and your Dad.
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I When I was first starting to eat panfish I did not know about filleting. Gut them fryed them ate them. still do scales are calceim ( minerals) and you don't waist any meat.
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Glad you took all you could catch. They do need to be thinned!
I have filleted the 5 to 6 inchers and actually get a pretty good couple of "fingers of meat.
You might also try the "10 Second Costa method"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjTlFwQb7D0
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Personally I absolutely HATE the "costa" method. To me that perch is not "cleaned" but just gutted and skinned. You'd have to eat "around" all the bones, which is NOT fun with perch. Use an electric fillet knife to buzz through them and leave no bones. Oh, anything over 7" I keep and less than that gets tossed back or turned into bait.
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Well, there were plenty of 7+ inchers and a few eights thrown in the mix.
Having been stabbed in the mouth by perch bones in the past, I'm afraid I'm a fillet guy myself too.
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I don't like the "Costa method" myself for a fillet sized fish. It isn't bad though for the little ones that I usually smoke and can. The only get cleaned, deheaded, and skinned.
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Having worked through a few limits, I've decided to limit at 8", but also welcome the idea of smaller as bait. Realized those 3-4 inchers aew a prime offering.
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[quote gmwahl]So I took my girls up to Montpelier reservoir yesterday and today for some perch fishing and it was about as fast as I could get a line down a hole it was being hit. What a Dilema, huh?
Thing is, I'm a believer in if you are getting tons of dinks then the herd needs to be thinned and as Idaho has no limit on perch we kept everything that came to the top. The perch averaged 6-9". Hopefully if more people keep a ton of them the size will get bigger.
So.... What do y'all do with the dinks if you keep them? I made chowder tonight after spending an hour and a half filleting the buggers and it was really good, but any other ideas to use them without wasting them?[/quote]
I think it depends on how good you are at cleaning fish. An electric fillet knife sure helps but might make cleaning really small fish harder. I don't know.
I have kept some pretty small perch when there were gobs of them and nothing else... man are they tasty! but you kind of feel weird cleaning such small fish and it is quite a bit of effort for very little actual meat.
I think anything less than 5-6 inches is probably too small there is a point where they just don't have the backbone to allow for you to clean all of them successfully. You'll mess up half of them. If that happens, take note of the size and try to keep them an inch or two bigger.
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Yep I'm a masochist too lololol. I don't like to waste anything either! When I fillet there is no meat on the bone, I'm pretty thorough. I even do the tiny 4 to 5 in gills that appear on the ice at mantua. Crappie. perch, blues are the best! Of course there's walleye too and that is just a few weeks away now. hahaha.
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Printed your recipes to try haha. Probably substituting whole foods quality organic spices though hahaha. I've seared fillets in organic cajun and lemon pepper, organic curry a few times complete with organic lemongrass lol, even tried a bottle of the tandoori seasoning since it sounded weirdly interesting lol. All good but ready for something new. haha. Also baked with organic dill weed and olive oil. Tried just about everything I ran into. Baking is still kinda flavorless to me lol, it seems the seasonings just don't soak in like with searing. But waaay less unnecessary Omega 6 oil involved as in searing. The only good result was to have tons of organic balsamic vinaigrette drenched into the fillets. lol.
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Been stabbed too! Perch bones esp the lateral bones, the tiny ones that branch out from the main rib cage are dangerously hard for such a small fish. Had one in the throat for a month scraping around once before it finally fell out and I coughed it back out!!!! Didn't really want throat surgery lol. This was a fillet from hyrum, I was saving meat and making too small a sacrifice on the lateral incision and a random bone was left.
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