Deboning northern pike a different way

ok today we are going to debone some

northern

pike

and i wanted to show people a little

different

way to do it because i have a little

different

method of

deboning

pike

most guys when they debone pike have i have just one full bone steak now i always find when i'm at the filleting table and the mosquitoes are killing me and everything i'm really not in the mood for

deboning

so i just take the phillips off the pickerel and remove the bones and then when i am back at home or in front of the campfire and have a drink or something to go i can take out all the bones i deboned the pike a little bit different method where i cut the pieces or cut the pike into small pieces which are ready to go in the skillet or wherever you are going to put them today.

I'm going to put some in a brine to smoke and eat myself. say its just an easier way to do it for me and i dont have to fight the elements i can even debone after afte i froze the fish in this case what i am using today has already frozen once and i have thought about it and i am going gonna put a smoked grind in here today so i got my pickerel to fill it up here um the ribs are off and it's just a regular fillet and here i have to take a little bit of the skin off here i'll leave a little bit of that for transport so you can tell what kind of fish is it all good so here's my pretty pillow fill it up most people would agree if you cut off the tail right there there won't be any bones in this piece my first piece is ready to go in the pan , boneless or in smoker brine.

Whichever is the case now, it's kind of personal preference depending on your spade size, but you want to lower the stakes. In this case, I'll probably cut this guy into about I don't know three bets, probably, so I'll cut them once. or twice so here I go I have three pike stakes and they all have bones in them all three pieces have bone in so now there's the trick to get the bone out quickly and then throw it in the pan so if you look at this first stake that I took here there's a little ridge of white bones right on the other side of here those are the tips of the Y bones and what you want to do is cut on the outside of the Y bones a little bit down and then pull out the knife.

What you're doing is guiding it along the Y-bone, okay, and this is where I do things a little bit differently, as I can feel. the bone with my knife i slide it out and cut it through i don't care where the end of the bone is here i cut it past the end and cut it through so what i have here is a piece of pipe that has no bones in it not at all so inside the pan now with this piece here the bones the bones are still here you go basically to the center of the steak just go down about an eighth of an inch you can feel the bones if they're there but you're going to go down you're on the other side of the and then you turn your knife and I cut up you just slide the knife right along the bones and you can see them there you just have the knife cut towards you and right along the underside of the bone and you're going to cut up the end of the bones and there you go and that piece is all bone so what we're left with here is fully boned

northern

pike ready to go into my brine for smoking here now you can see it's a varied thickness so that you might want to leave it like that and throw it in the pan but it will probably cook at different rates usually what I'll do is take the thin piece cut it off that little thin piece can go in the pan and this thicker piece in this case why do I have to go to the smoker I'll cut right there and I'm fine with two pieces of d-bone fish right there so now we're going to do this with the second steak on the fillet and you can actually see very good you can see in this here that little white line there that is your bones and right there and w we're going to cut on the outside of the bone in a Y so we're going to cut on this side so we're going to cut nice and straight and this is when you have short pieces like this, don't meander and go all over the place on you.

I'm doing this with a fairly stiff fillet knife, but you can actually do it with a meat cleaver. It's that easy to do so it's not very specific and it doesn't take a lot of a lot of talent really I still feel along the top of the Y bones along the top of the Y bone and we're going to cut right there unscrew when I run my finger over there I can actually test if there are bones no bones there I can it's a quick test is you can feel every piece you work with if there's a bone left you'll know so you can see here it is the center line fills it all this side down here there's no bones in this at all so we've got a nice straight piece here.

We're going to go right on the center line. Go down just a little. Start cutting. On that fork is a piece, then back up and you can see my knife sliding along the bottom of the bones and talk straight about feeling the bone if you feel less basic it feels like tons of bone there and here. feel here with my thumb nothing boneless boneless and boneless through there and again so this can go right into the pan and again I'm going to cut it a little bit differently for my own good here because of what I'm doing but like whatever you want to cut this you can go ahead and cut it any old fashioned way to put in a pan so my third piece I know this piece here came off the bottom side of the fish so no bones in that ok like this that we're going to climb up here to the top of our bones And, get out of them a little quicker this time, make sure you're under boned and here get in here and we're going to chase under our bones and and and straight and right here, we'll cut it there and we'll all be fine l the catfish on the bone and that's how it's done