Cleaning fish in Sleeper House

I know, I know, this has come up before, but I never see a black and white answer. So I am asking again.

When staying in a sleeper house, either rented or your own, how do you handle cleaning fish on the ice?

I have heard, leave the fish intact, just freeze them, but I don’t like the idea of the guts in them as they sit for a day or two, even frozen.

I have heard you can clean them, de-gut them, but leave the entire skeleton structure, head and all attached, so they can be measured, on lakes with slot limits. Still don’t know how this works with a frozen carcass, how they measure it.

I have been told, clean them as usual, with the 1″ patch of skin on the fillet, and just keep the carcasses in a different bag for measuring and identification. I know to keep the carcasses in a bag, if eating on the ice, but not sure about this if you freeze the fillets.

I have basically heard it all, and even the saying that irritates me more than anything else, “just clean them the way you want, if you don’t get caught, no harm no foul”, hate that saying.

I am headed up to Upper Red Lake in a week for a few days, and I hope to be cleaning and keeping fish, so wondering if anyone has a black and white answer on this. I suppose finding a resort with a licensed packer and paying for fish cleaning is the obvious, for sure, answer, but my guide service does not provide that.

Thanks ahead for any words of wisdom.

Page 34 of the Regs book. Not unclear at all.
In a nutshell, you may “gut” the fish and keep it “in the whole” and measurable until you are ready to cook it. Then you can filet it when you are ready to cook. You must still keep the carcass in a measurable form, thru midnight that day as it counts toward your daily limit.

If you have fillets in the house and are not “preparing a meal”, and are checked (even if you have the carcasses), you could get a ticket. Not saying you would, but the CO’s up there see/hear every excuse in the book on a weekly basis.

Thanks xplorer,

I went back and read page 34 as you stated, and I get the eating on the lake part, but I think if we were going to eat them, we would do one of the resorts “eat your own fish” meals with fixings. Good reason to get off the lake for a while.

And I understand the “keep in whole” now, so you can gut them, but that is it. So I wonder, if you gut a fish, does that affect the length, make it longer by change laying flatter without the guts? Cuz it would still have to meet the length requirement gutted vs. whole.

I think that is about as black and white as I can ask for, thanks.

Todd,
I spend alot of time up in Voyaguers Nat’l park camping out on the islands in summer. It has the same requirements with the slot up there. If we want to bring any fish home (all sites are out on the lakes and require a boat trip back to whatever launch we use) we have to keep them gutted only.
I tend to give myself a half inch leeway, ie, the slot up there is no fish between 17-28. So I will only keep and gut fish up to 16.5″ if I’m taking them home, and I’ve never had a problem.
What you do want to do is get rid of your carcasses the following morning (they count toward your limit until they are “gone”). Unfortunately in a sleeper this means taking them to shore, but in reality, this is why so many carcasses end up in snow piles or shoved down holes out on URL.
Good luck, from my friends that have been up to URL so far, you should do well!!

Best practice –
If you are going to eat fish on the ice, make sure you have the frying pan out and sitting on the stove prior to filleting the fish.

Remember your limit is your limit. I would just catch and release or cook immediately until your last day, then keep your limit.

Yeah, I understand the daily possession limits, life long MN fisherman. And we typically only keep a meals worth of fish anyways, not a full limit. Like to keep the resource alive and well for my kids and grand kids, and beyond. This is our annual 3 generation (grandpa, dad, son) trip, and would love to keep the tradition going for multiple generations.

But my daughters love fresh fish, especially Walleye, so I try to plan on taking some home for a meal, and was trying to figure out how to do that, legally in the sleeper house. I have waited until the last day to catch the keepers before, and got skunked many times, so if we catch keeper fish the first day or second, would just like to put some on ice for the trip home. But we do plan on doing a meal a day, hopefully while we are there.

That’s why they call it fishing, and not catching, right!

If the place you’re staying has a cleaning station on shore on the last day go there with your one daily limit and clean them. Just remember to keep the 1×1″ patch of skin on them for ID purposes. That is what we’ve done in the past. We aren’t huge on taking a ton of fish either so we usually just take a one man limit for every two people.

I’ve spent a lot of nights on URL and LOW in rented sleepers or my own Ice Castle. We always just filleted immediately prior to cooking, and then either made a trip to shore with carcassas after dinner, or made the trip in the morning to dump them. Never had an issue going that route. Yea it can be a bummer to drive in and dump fish guts, but it really doesn’t take long and I always enjoyed getting out of the house for a short time.

You need to keep your fish carcasses with you until midnight of the day you ate them on the ice.