How to clean a bluegill

So when i went fishing with my dad last week, he taught me how to clean fish. Not the most fun thing to do, but i did clean a few myself, as it seems that this is a thing that an outdoorsy person should know how to do, in case you’re stranded in way in the wilderness after being lost off a trail, plane-wrecked, shipwrecked, or some other version of shit-outta-luck. Here's how to do it, in case you don't know how. I probably am forgetting/leaving out something, but this isn't rocket science. you can figure it out.

And now it begins. I don’t like the method of killing them/making them not feel anything – turn the knife around and hit them in the forehead a couple times pretty hard. My dad called it a frontal lobotomy. I’ll take his word on it. Like I said, I don’t like that part. Then grab em by the gill, take the knife and feel for the bone behind the head, and cut from it down along behind that fin that sticks out. Kind of a diagonal cut from the head down to the belly area. You’re only doing one side at a time, so you’re not trying to cut through the entire body here. You can tell your boundaries (major bones) as you’re cutting. Gotta do it I guess to know what I mean.

Then start the next cut from your initial cut up top and run it down the spine along the top of the fish. Cut parallel to the length of the fish, and feel the bones to guide you and stay close to them, so as not to miss any of the meat.

Once you have the cut down the length of the fish, open it up with your hands and get your cut a bit further down (from the spine down towards the belly). Cut about down to the ribs to open it up more. The ribs will be your boundary here. Cut firmly, but not like you’re trying to cut through bone.

Starting right behind the ribs, cut through the fish so the knife sticks out the bottom side of it, as seen in the picture. Then take the cut out the back of the fish to the tail. Keep your cut down low (in the fish) all the way to the tail, so as not to miss meat back there. Make the cut come out right before the part of the tail without any meat. Just about right after where the knife it in the above picture.

Now that the cut is out the back, you can open it up even more. Hold the fillet up out of the way, and cut along the ribs. Just kinda scrape/cut along the ribs to pull the fillet back further without cutting through the ribs/breaking them.

Then take the cut through to the bottom side of the fish, and the fillet is off!

Then put the fillet with the scales down, and use a fingernail to hold down the skin, but not the meaty part. Get the knife in there and start cutting along the inside of the skin, to separate the skin from the meat.

Once you get started, it’s easy.

Once you’ve skinned it, there’s a small section of bone you have to cut out. I forgot to take a picture of it, but it’s a small section. Start at the bottom point of the fish in the picture above, move up the left angled side right to where there’s some red/blood. Its right in there, you just cut a small triangle to cut that section out. You can feel it

Done! now do the other side! You’ll find that you’re really good at the initial cut on one side, and on the other side, you’re really good at second, long cut along the inside of the body.

so yea, that's how you do that. think i'm done eating fish unless i do this process myself.