How to Remove Northern Pike Y Bones

here on the edge it is rare that we film what is known as the meat package off camera; However, the staff, like many fishermen, enjoy the selective harvesting that brings a great meal of fresh fish to the table. It turns out that Red Lake is one of those fish factories. that produces delicious diners and a lot of them so today we will keep some of the catch in preparation for our annual fish fry office walleye and even some yes what the heck said the sheep will be a great meal when it comes to keeping some of the catch For a meal many anglers avoid eating

pike

which in our opinion here on the edge are among the best fish to eat, the key to a well prepared

pike

however is boneless pike and there are some tools that make The process is very simple.

We recently returned from a trip to Ontario's huge Lake Nipigon, which is the premier lunch spot on the coast. Here's an outtake from our trip and hopefully a Pike cleaning tip you can use. We just got back to the houseboat right now on Lake Nipigon. We have a couple of nice pike in the tank, we are going to eat them for dinner tonight and I have a couple of basic tools in front of me that are really good to have in any fish cleaning scenario and they are also portable so if you go Go on a Canadian expedition like the one we're doing now and you're going to cut a lot of fish.

It's good to have these available. Number one I guess is a Rapala cordless knife and I like them because I can do precision. pike perch and pike fillets and I can do it in no time. The lithium ion battery has a lot of life. I can use it for a long time without recharging and we also have a generator on board so power is not an issue and then you should always have that trusty and true Repla martini knife. This one can be done all the time and I prefer to use it for small

bones

, like taking out the white

bones

, and I'll use them to generate a lot of really nice plays quickly.

I'll show you how I cut a pike now. This is a perfect cut on beautiful four pound pike fillets from a cold Clear Lake like this. The first thing I like to do is

remove

these anal fins back here and I'll show you why I do that, so I'll just use the electric knife. Okay, as you can see, I have a nice hole in my belly. Now what I like to do is end up with two fillets of very even proportions, so I'm going to take this knife and I'm going to run it up here and then I'm going to do the same thing back and now you can see that I have the fish divided evenly and that helps me make the fillets about the same size as already.

I made that cut, so the only cut I'm worried about right now is just mounting this electric filleting knife on the back, so you just go all the way down, turn right angles and it's really very simple, you can just mount the spine. That electric knife and look at the result, you can see how clean the fillet is and how little meat is left on the real fish. It's perfect and it's hard to do that with the filleting knife if you're good with the knife and you have a slightly bigger knife for a bigger fish like a pike you can do that but when you cut a lot of fish I'd like to take some of the physical work and use an electric to

remove

the rib cage. works really well with that - I like to start at one end, build up kind of a cut line across the whole thing and then I'll start working one end down and just ride that ribcage across the bottom of that rib. cage.

I do a different bone removal technique, tail piece on a pike and that's always bone free so I'll always take it out, that's the piece chosen, it's the one my missus likes to have, not that it matters because You're going to remove all the bones anyway, but I start by removing the tail and then there's this nice side line, this kind of breaking point between the two fillets and what I like to do is just take my fillet knife and run it down. until it almost separates. Naturally with your fingers, but it is cut very easily because it is already a division plane in the fillet.

This was the portion of belly that is completely free of bones. It's ready for the pan right now. I'll divide it into two nice, even portions. Right off the bat, I have a piece of tail and then two pieces of belly meat that have no bones. Now for the wire bones, this is the back of the pike, so what I like to do I can identify, I can see with the naked eye. now this paper of the bones And I can hear them with the knife. I like to take my martini knife and make a light cut along the Y bones.

Here I can hear the knife cutting them lightly and then I just angle the knife and mount. those bones all the way down to get that really delicious piece of chicken finger that fries up so well, so there we go, there's that back piece now that's completely bone free and great for finger food right out of the pan or fryer, then I'll take this back piece and I'll actually remove a good piece of meat that's left on the back of the bones Y and that'll give me my last good piece, so again I'll cut it in half into two good pieces. and then this is what's left of the bones And, not much meat wasted and voila, Pike ready for the frying pan.