A spoon works great as a scaler for average size panfish. If you really want to go to town, get yourself a 1×1 about 8 inches long. Then nail three bottle caps to it.
With four year olds, I would stick to filleting and removing all bones although leaving the skin on and scaling adds so much flavor.
Otherwise I’m a “whole” fish person myself. My FW likes the breading all around potato chip taste.
Even with panfish, if you end up with ‘chips’, you’re wasting too much meat. My fillets are boneless with the belly meat intact.
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My fillets are boneless with the belly meat intact.
Interesting. Please explain further.
Belly meat contains toxins. I never keep any belly meat of any fish.
I fillet all of my fish. Once the fillets soak for a short time in ice water they puff up a little. When you add some batter or breading they end up larger than you would have thought once fried.
I fillet everything, too, mainly because growing up, my mom refused to eat them any other way, and now my wife is the same way.
I do fondly remember the Grandma/Great-Grandma’s fish fries, though–skin and tails intact. I loved eating the crispy tails. Might have to do some up like that for nostalgia purposes. 
If your going to do a lot of sunnies, a five gallon bucket scaler is a great investment. We use one every Fourth of July for the Family fish fry. After a few mintues in the scaler, fillet, beer batter and deep fryer. With all the other sides, potato salad, beans, etc.. Only takes a few sunnies per adult for a great feed.
As a kid, my parents did the scale and gut technique, but I prefer to fillet them myself now as an adult. If I have the time, I actually like to scale and filet. Not sure if the skin adds any flavor, but I think it does, and belief is a powerful thing.
I got a Rapala electric filet knife and have gone from a butcher to getting nice clean fillets that don’t waste much meat, even on a small panfish.
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My fillets are boneless with the belly meat intact.
Interesting. Please explain further.
I think he butterfly’s them.
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My fillets are boneless with the belly meat intact.
Interesting. Please explain further.
I think he butterfly’s them.
He just knows how to use a knife. 
I fillet, takes longer to scale and gut then just fillet them.
If I have less than eight fish and the time to spend I will gut and scale. I think the fish taste 2-3X as good, and you get to eat the tail.
If I have a bunch of fish or plan on serving them to someone who doesn’t know how to eat them off the bones, then I fillet.
When I fillet, I usually don’t keep the belly meat intact with the fillet-it is too thin and doesn’t cook at the same pace as the rest of the fillet (important if you bake or grill fish). If I do keep the belly meat, I often have a separate bag for belly meat only, and that turns into fish tacos or fish cakes.
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…and you get to eat the tail.
That is the one thing I don’t get to do with the fillet. I may start cutting them off to fry too. It grosses out my girlfriend when I eat it, but I love them. Just like when I eat the tail of a shrimp, the girlfriend doesn’t like that either.
I will actually eat as much of the dorsal fin as possible, right up to the spines which I can’t eat.
Takes me about 45 seconds to fillet a panfish. Cant stand standing out there scaling and cleaning fish whole for an hour then picking through them eating it. I’d rather fillet them any day of the week. If they are too small for you to get a good fillet, throw them back.
I fillet everything. Last fish I gutted were a couple of trout. 2 was more than enough for me NOT to consider gutting/gilling anymore fish. I can fillet sunnies in about 45 seconds as well. I just go along the backbone, cut thru and go down to the tail, reverse the knife and detach all meat up to the last rib, clean the cut on the backbone, grab the loose skin above the rib cage, give it hard yank till its loose from the side bones, then use the fillet knife to get the meat off the ribs. Very fast and quick. I never get potato chips off a sunnie larger than 7″, if I do, I really screwed up that fillet.
I fillet everything. Just too dangerous for my liking to let a 4 & 6 year old munch on something with small bones.
Perfection comes with practice. I stood next to a buddy at the cleaning table recently filleting the goodies. He could count the number of times on one finger-less hand he filleted panfish in the past. 1/2 of his “fillet” ~ if you wanna call them that were reduced to bite chunks off 8″ gills. Fortunately for meat’s sake ~ I knocked out 4 to his 1. I do have to say he was getting better in terms of cut quality as he processed more fish. But he is still several limits away from filleting an 8″ gill in 1 minute.
Wow, the tails… I haven’t thought of that in years, since I was a kid.
As for speed of cleaning, I will bet that (given a few to pull those skills back got he front of my brain) you’d be surprised at how fast a sunnie can be scaled and gutted. I used to be able to do 10 bullheads a minute… same techniques apply to panfish, only difference is scaling.
But it’s -messy-.
As for filleting, it too me an hour to do 7 fish. I should get an electric fillet knife… that little Rapala 6″ blade just takes too long.
It seems like theres about a 50/50 split between the fillet guys and the gut&gill guys.
As for kids and bones on whole fish, I always just picked the meat off the bones for any kids that were around.
So BK, do you do your walleye whole too?
I gut, then scale, then cut off the backbone. I do miss crunching on the tails tho…
Exactly! Thank you Stuart.
Practice makes perfect. Keep at it and after a few more rounds the fillet size will increase
There was eight kids in our family and I can still remember my father boning the cooked fish for all the litle guys. I learned how to filet and would bring fish home all ready to cook. Pa got to eat with the rest of us. Taught him how to filet and that was it, throw the scalers away. The little bit of meat I lose is not worth the effort.
The thing I like about an electric fillet knife is that I am wasting less meat than when I did it by hand. I do get a little belly meat too and can cut around the ribs by gently lift the angled blade as I cut along the ribs.
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The thing I like about an electric fillet knife is that I am wasting less meat than when I did it by hand. …
You’ve convinced me that, expensive as they are, if you’re fishing to eat fish you’re better off to have one.
Next time I’m at Cabella’s…
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Exactly! Thank you Stuart.
I was about 9 or 10 when the old man gave me a knife a whetstone and a strop.
One more forgotten art.
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The thing I like about an electric fillet knife is that I am wasting less meat than when I did it by hand. …
You’ve convinced me that, expensive as they are, if you’re fishing to eat fish you’re better off to have one.
Next time I’m at Cabella’s…
I can not get as much meat off a fish with an electric as I can a real knife (nobody can, not physically possible)but it is a LOT quicker. The reason you can not get as much meat with an electric as a traditional knife is because the knife blades are thicker and serrated on the electric, so there is kerf with the electric. With a standard fillet knife you do not have near the kerf.
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I can not get as much meat off a fish with an electric as I can a real knife (nobody can, not physically possible)but it is a LOT quicker. The reason you can not get as much meat with an electric as a traditional knife is because the knife blades are thicker and serrated on the electric, so there is kerf with the electric. With a standard fillet knife you do not have near the kerf.
But you only get kerf if your cutting tool Removes material in order to make the cut, like a circular saw blade. They only do that to keep the blade from binding in the material.
No knife, no matter how thick the blade is, is going to have a kerf because the cutting happens on the edged section of the blade. If it did you’d build up a pile of fish residue the same way that you build up saw dust with a table saw.
I have a Kabar Heavy Bowie that has a 3/16 spine on the blade, but cutting still happens at the sharpened edge. It makes no gouge, it just slices. Same thing with am electric knife. It may use vibration and serration to allow the same cut with less pressure, but it still just slices.
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I was about 9 or 10 when the old man gave me a knife a whetstone and a strop. One more forgotten art.
Bingo.
Electric knives cannot be manipulated like a conventional fillet knife. Nothing can beat a good fillet knife that has been properly sharpened and hand honing does this better than any machine. Today’s diamond stones put a great edge on but I always finish with a hard stone and that edge lasts thru dozens of fish.
I am telling you right now, I get more meat with the electric and it is cleaner. Out of respect, I try getting all the meat I can when keeping a fish. With a regular fillet knife, sometimes that doesn’t work out too well because I hack the meat up more that have pieces that end up coming off and being wasted. That and I take forever and after a while I lose my stamina and start speeding things up just to get it done.
I am sure there are a lot of guys who keep a lot of fish and are hand filleting a lot and getting a lot of practice. Because I don’t keep a ton of fish, I am always out of practice. The electric seems to make up for it though by making things easier.
Even with the electric having 2 serrated blades, the edges come to a fine point. There is negligible tearing going on.
Like I said though, I am sure there are guys out there who are much better with a manual knife. I’ve seen it. But for me personally the electric works better.
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the smaller ones taste the best anyway 
