White Bass

One of my neighbors went fishing on the Detroit River.  He limited out on Walleye and White Bass.

He gave me 25 of the White Bass and a couple of Walleye, so I got to practice my fish cleaning skills.

I filleted them.

If I were ever in a situation where I really needed food, I would behead and gut them rather than filleting them.  I would boil the heads for soup stock.  One of my high school friends showed me a trick involving filleting the cooked fish on the plate.  It is critical to not over cook the fish.  He lifted the skeleton and top fillet off the bottom fillet.  He flipped the lifted portions, meat-side-down.  Then he proceeded to lift the intact skeleton out of the now-bottom fillet.  Zero meat left on the skeleton.  Zilch.

These fish are different than the ones I grew up cleaning.  Their bones are stiff and knobby.  A lot of meat got left between the bones because the knife must skip along the sides of the wide, coarse vertebrate on this species of fish.

The White Bass also had bigger gut cavities than the fish I usually clean.  Maybe because it is spawning season.  I don't know.

The upshot was that the fillets were smaller than I expected given the size of the fish.