Electric fillet knife or regular fillet knife

Cleaned a mess of sunfish today and used an electric fillet knife for the first. Took me a few to figure it out but it worked great. What does everyone else prefer???

Electric for me, always.

Personally don’t like the electric. I have never seen anyone get all the belly meat with an electric. Just my opinion.

Electric, haven’t used a regular knife in years.

Electric to get the fillet off then normal knife for ribcages, bones, and other trimming

Dan wrote:

Electric to get the fillet off then normal knife for ribcages, bones, and other trimming

X 2

x3

Electric for walleyes, panfish and pike. Getting the belly meat is no problem.

8-10″ cimeter/breaking knife for trout/salmon/lakers

I let sunfish swim unless I’ve hooked them deep and they aren’t going to live, but a standard fillet knives for all species with one being longer and sturdier for lake trout/salmon.

Neither, I release all of my fish.

I really admire the guys that have mastered the electric. I kept ruining fillets and went back to a sharp hand knife.

I can’t keep a regular knife of any sort sharp very long. The electric is pretty slick. Might need a new one. My battery doesn’t hold a charge very long

Electric for me, yes you lose a little belly meat but oh well.

Ive been using electronic on everything for years now

If I’ve only got 3 or 4 fish, I don’t bother with getting out an electric knife. I can clean those pretty quickly with a knife.

If I have a big mess of panfish that’ll take me over an hour to clean, then I’ll grab the electric knife.

I do have an electric filet knife dedicated to using in the kitchen for carving turkeys and roasts.

Leech Lakes for me.

I’ll stick to my wood handle Rapalas, feel I do pretty well with them and if I tried an electric, I may be missing some digits….

I was stubborn for many years sticking with the traditional knife. I always said until I see someone clean a fish better than I can with a straight blade while using an electric, I won’t switch.

Then the day came where I saw someone use an electric knife and cleaned fish like a machine. Every fillet was complete and perfect. He was nice enough to teach me his ways and now I will forever use an electric fillet knife when cleaning any fish at all. It just takes the right teacher and you would never consider using a straight blade again.

Regular, I only eat about 4 meals of fresh fish a year. Mostly catch and release for me.

Both.

Electric for small panfish
Regular for walleyes and northern.

It’s like Clapton sang. It’s in the way that you use it…

I fillet less than a hundred fish a year. More than half of those are in the Canadian sub arctic. I’ll stick to a boring old selection of regular old knives that I keep really, really sharp.

Grouse

bigstorm wrote:

I’ll stick to my wood handle Rapalas, feel I do pretty well with them and if I tried an electric, I may be missing some digits….

+1
I have a really good sharpener. Gets touched up when it comes out of the dishwasher. Razor sharp (shaves the hair off my arm) and ready for next time.

Electric for me. Haven’t used a fillet knife in over 8 years.

If you were good at filleting fish with a fillet knife, picking up an electric will be easy. If you aren’t practiced with filleting fish at all…there’s a learning curve.

Same with tying your shoes

Rapala filet knife for myself

I love my electric for Walleye, still some occasional mistakes. Crappie however I still pull out the regular fillet knife.

Call me old school, but I always still use a regular knife, as I get a good feeling about producing a nice fillet with it. I have tried an electric and they do work wonderfully, but I will stick with the old school knife. Sometimes old habits die hard.

Switched to electric about 15 years ago and will never go back. Though I entirely prefer the corded version vs. battery powered.

I’ve used corded electric for ~15 years and haven’t looked back. My Rapala came with 2 sets of blades with one fairly short and one quite long that work well on anything from bluegills to big pike. 90% of my harvested fish are perch or 15-18″ eyes, and the electric makes short work of them.

I do keep a few very sharp regular fillet knives around, but rarely use them. Whatever you decide to use, I really encourage you to use the same thing with a routine that you can perfect.

Electric all the way except Northerns then the knife comes out 30 years using electric cannot imagine cleaning a mess of fish with a regular knife.

What brand does everybody like? I’ve been looking on line and there are lots of mixed reviews about every make and model it seems like.