Cleaning A Northern Pike, No Bones, No Slime, No Kidding

In today's video we are going to fly from Northern Pike using the five piece method and we are going to remove all the

bones

. We're really going to take out all the

bones

. Hello everyone, Dave can come in here from the counters. practical outdoors and you all know mr. Pike, right, has a bad reputation, sometimes has a lot of pork bones, gets a little slimy in the summer, most guys don't really like dealing with them, but I'll tell you that if you clean them. right, they're just a great eating fish, they really are and you know, this particular size is really nice.

This is a 29 inch pipe. My son caught us last night. This is a great size to keep

cleaning

and eating. And what this pipe did is. He spent the night in my bait cooler so it cooled down nicely and you'll notice as I clean it it won't be as slimy at all so let's get started. I'm going to take my biggest knife. and what I'm going to do I'm going to go down right behind the head I'm going to go down to the spine don't go over the spine and I'm going to turn the knife I'm going to follow it back and I'm going to go up just before this fin, but this It's something you have to keep in mind and a lot of people miss it if you go down and follow it and scrape that spine all the way to the end.

We're going to cut the tips off of those fork bones and then this piece of meat that comes off is actually going to have little tips of fork bones on it, so what I'm going to do is I'll be writing a little bit on the heel or the back edge of this knife and moving forward and that should prevent the tips of the fork bones from cutting off and ending up in this meat, so here we go, we go behind it all the way to the spine. I'm going to go around like I said, I'm going to ride up the back edge, the knife, not the front edge, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to go up just before the fin, okay, and now there's a piece, my On the Next two cuts I'm going to remove these sections of the tail and what you want to do is go into the fish about an inch or so behind where this fin starts, there will be some spines here, you've got a little scar there we're going to avoid that then - while we're at it, but you don't want to start right here, you're going to catch some bones in this area, so from both here back is what we want to angle it a little bit, like get under those scales and just nice and easy, just behind there is another piece, same thing on this side, put an inch or so behind where this fin starts, we'll angle it a little bit. is to go under those scales right on the spine down and that and a lot of times what happens is you'll get to this point and when you cut this upper part of the back a lot of times you'll be able to see the tips of the spines of the fork here now in this fish you can't because remember when I went in and went up a little bit to avoid cutting off the tips of those fork bones, see that's the problem you know most of the time when guys. cut this off and you can see the fork spines right there without even feeling them, that's because you cut off the tips.

I didn't do that on this fish, so what we want to do is just find them and basically They'll be about halfway between the center and the edge, so about a quarter of the way, what you can do is just run the knife through. and they'll be facing back and that's where they are, right there, so What I want to do is cut just the outside edge of them all the way. If I had gone right down to that column and shaved along the edge of that column, we would have all those fork bone tips on this piece right now, so what I'm going to do now I'm going to make a cut here, let's go to make a cut here, we're going to make the same cut on this side, down there, right there, this is where I'm going to use a smaller knife and remember the fork bones are about halfway down the center here, so I'll find it with the tip of the knife, there we go and we'll cut right along the edge of the house and just start peeling this and you'll feel them there with the knife.

Now a lot of guys just leave that belly meat there, it's a little tough meat, but that's a piece of boneless

pike

meat right there and the same thing. on the other side just follow it down okay now we're going to remove all the skin start with this guy this is where I use the smaller knife just to hold let's get started we'll just remove that. it comes out of there and then one thing with this piece is sometimes there's a little bit of membrane in the middle, so I like to cut it straight, just cut it on each side, it's a little bit tough, you can eat it. but like I said, it's a little difficult so I don't do it so we have that tail section and the second one where our sides, let's do it around the other side and then we have it guys and this really is a boned

pike

. here there are no bones here there are no pieces of rib here there this is going to fry excellent so remember to catch fish laugh repeat and don't be afraid to keep a pike from time to time take out the bones throw them in the pan this is Dave kaneto from kinetise practical outdoors thanks for watching and God bless you