For a long time, ever since my mother’s stroke back in the 1980’s, I’ve filleted bluegills with the skin left on. Recently, I was fishing with a friend who insisted that they taste better fried with the bones in. So today, I fried up a mess of fish with just the heads and guts removed like we did when I was young. I can’t say that the flavor was better though I did enjoy eating the tails. I also had a huge mess of bones and fins. Eating them took longer and I found a lot of missed bones. I think I’ll use my brother’s idea of trying to leave the tail attached to some fillets but that’s my last bunch fish cleaned that way. So how do you clean panfish?
I fillet them off the bone and the skin. The skin and stuff goes in my compost pile.
Rick
Agree with Rick…we do the same.
…lee s.