Scaling pan fish

Curious how many guys are
Still scaling pan fish.
My grandparents always did.
They wouldn’t of ever considered taking the skin off. My parents always filleted em and haven’t scaled them for decades. We’ve been having enough luck to
Have some fish frys lately and I’m thinking I’m going to scale the next batch to try it that way again.

All I can remember about it is scales flying everywhere.

We scale them a couple times a year. Don’t always mess with it. But the skin is tasty!

I scale EVERY sunfish, but that’s the only fish I scale. our family has this gizmo called the cyclone, a fish scaling machine. basically a 5 gallon pail with a paddle you hook up to a drill, and inside the pail there is a perforated stainless tube that does the scaling. I then fillet them out. do however clean some sunfish whole……i’m kinda old school yet!!!

Scale them in a dish pan under water with a regular tablespoon.

These are like a snow plow for scales- they don’t fly just pile up. Skin on pannies are the best flavor there is.

Alagnak Pete wrote:

<div class=”ido-oembed-wrap”><iframe title=”Bicco Plastic Fish Scaler” type=”text/html” width=”850″ height=”550″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen=”” style=”max-width:100%” src=”https://read.amazon.com/kp/card?preview=inline&linkCode=kpd&ref_=k4w_oembed_uam45y8YQ8fRIf&asin=B01KIQY3P8&tag=kpembed-20″></iframe></div&gt;
These are like a snow plow for scales- they don’t fly just pile up. Skin on pannies are the best flavor there is.

This tool is the best scales don’t fly. Dip in water to clean scales off after each side of fish. Works great on sunnies and crappy but hard to do walleyes.

Use a pressure washer.
Get one of those gimicky fish cleaning boards with the clamp and clamp them by the tail.

Dusty Gesinger wrote:

We scale them a couple times a year. Don’t always mess with it. But the skin is tasty!

Same. However I don’t like the cold leftovers with skin on.

I love the skin. I can’t say for sure it changes the flavor, but at the very least aestheticly speaking I prefer them

I grew up scaling everything, including walleye! However we never used to catch many when I was young. Now I scale all pan fish, and do my walleye with an electric.