Processing a limit of walleye

This is the first of a two-part series about cleaning walleye.

Recently an acquaintance stopped me in a local retail store.

“I’ve read about you catching walleye and how you clean and cook some of it, but would you please give me a step-by-step account of how you process each piece of a walleye?” he asked.

His request was granted, but I realized the conversation should be carried forward to others. There are many ways to clean walleye and I’m open to learning all of them. This is my way.

When a walleye is caught it is placed in a live well, if in a boat. If on land the fish is cut at the gills, to bleed it. This is a lesson learned this spring from friend, Bob Chudomelka.

We were filleting fish when Bob commented on my bloody fillets.

“If you bleed the fish, the fillets will be free of blood,” he said.

Bleeding fish is not new. Anglers have been doing so forever, salmon, walleye; all kinds of fish. This was an eye-opener for me, and easy to understand, as we were cleaning fish across a table from each other. My fillets were red with blood and Bob’s were white, without a drop of blood.

Until this night, my fish were dispatched with a thump on the head as soon as they were caught. After the discussion with Bob and his visual demonstration, my fish were cut at the gills as soon as they were caught. This caused the blood to drain from the fish and the fillet to become blood free.

The fish is usually dead after the bleeding process is complete. If not, it receives a thump on the head. Next each fish is rinsed with a garden hose to remove any debris, such as dirt or grass.

At this point, each fish is placed on my fillet board, one by one. The cheek is cut out using my Buck pocket knife and placed on the table. Next the fillet is cut from the side of the fish, using an electric fillet knife with the long blades. This hunk of fish flesh, containing the fillet, skin and ribs, is placed in a pile.

The walleye is turned over and the fillet board rotated 180 degrees. This allows me to cut the second fillet, again, from the head to the tail. First the second cheek is cut from the fish and then the second fillet, each placed in the appropriate pile. Next the walleye wing is removed and placed in a third pile. Sometimes the egg skeins are saved, making a fourth pile.

This routine continues until we have a limit of walleye in four piles; 16 cheeks, 16 fillets, eight wings and a few skeins of eggs.

Each large piece of walleye, containing the fillet, ribs and skin, is again placed on the fillet board and the skin is removed. This is simply a matter of starting at the tail end and cutting the meat from the skin. Making sure the blades of the knife are angled down a bit will separate every bit of meat from the skin in one quick maneuver.

While conducting this process recently a small and narrow item was noticed. It was about a quarter of an inch long, or less, and skinny. It resembled a worm and my first thoughts revolved around such an animal. Were there worms in the walleye fillets?

These were dismissed at the first discovery and were easily washed off the meat. But the second time they were visible, on the second fillet, concern was a top priority. A magnifying glass was used to view these objects. Upon closer inspection it was determined they were small fish scales, with the worm-like coloring located at the top of the scale, in a slight curve. This was an interesting exercise in noticing a new part of a fish, thinking it was a bad infestation and figuring out the problem was simply a normal part of the fish.

The main piece of meat, the fillet, still has the ribs in place. The tip of the knife is angled around the rib cage to remove it from the fillet. There is still a reasonable amount of meat on the rib cage, so it is saved, placed in another pile, for additional processing.

Next week: Processing the wings, cheeks and ribs.