When you guys are cleaning fish at home, what do you do with the guts if you don't live near a major water body?

One way is to toss them in a Walmart bag, freeze them until trash day and then put them out in the trash on trash day. This way u trash can don't smell for days before being picked up.

Yea, a "guy I know" does that. I just wonder if the city would fine "that guy" if they found out?

When I clean fish at the house, that is what I do and so far no one has made a comment about it.

+1 Except my wife cleans the fish, bags the remain in the freezer. I take them out on trash days. Lol
Been doing that for decades. No proplemo!

I throw them in the pasture and leet the coons have them. Sometimes I throw them in the garden and fill them in. It is supposed to be good for the soil.

I watched my parents did that when I was younger. Their gardens were often very green . The native American taught the new settler pilgrims that also as natural fertilizers

Back a few years ago I tried that... I was single and had a girl (just friends) roommate. I got cute and buried some guts in the flower bed and hoped it would make the soil better (really I was just too lazy to deal with the guts and figured "heck, I'll kill two birds with one stone"). I too remembered my elementary school curriculum with the Indians burying the fish heads in the soil for better crops. Well, that night a buddy and I went out on the town and tied one on pretty hard. My buddy crashed on the couch and I passed out in my bed upstairs. The next morning, I woke up to sudden gagging, vomiting, and eventually, a very angry, screaming woman. It was that day I learned the full extent of how bad a woman's scorn can be. My roommate let her dog out that morning, and the little chit dug up the fish guts, ate most of them, then proceeded to come inside, jump on my buddy who was peacefully sleeping on the couch, lick him in the face (producing the gagging and vomit), then run upstairs dragging a fish carcass into my roommates bed.

You should have seen the look of angered bewilderment on her face when I nervously tried explaining the Indian - fish fertilizer lesson to her when she asked me what happened. Have you ever been laughing so hard that you can barely breath while at the same time someone is fuming mad and about to kill you? Well I guess she either missed that day of school or Houston area schools didn't teach the same lessons. She did NOT see the humor in the situation as I did.

She got over it eventually, and we have a good laugh about it every chance we get.

I just throw them in the trash. Our trash day is Monday and I usually fish on Sunday. Its never
been a problem.

Brocephus, That was funny!

I put them in the lawn leaf bag and put them in my trash. My trash pick up is monday so that helps!

Mine get tossed into White Rock Creek.

Our local corner store is nice enough to put trash cans by the gas pumps. Just sayin. Ha

Great for baiting a catfish hole! Freeze them in a bucket and dump the bucket around some trees in the lake and you can catch cats all day long.

That's very funny Brocephus I've tried all mentioned methods except the corner store trash can I live in the country now, yep buried em guts in the garden the dogs will dig em up, throwing them out in pasture there will be wars between my dogs and the racoon and coyotes all night...

Until I came up with a solution that makes my dogs happy, remove guts from stomach and bury them in a deep hole and poor ash over dirt. Cut the carcass into manageable length and smoke them to crispy and crunchy, let em cool down then feed em to the dogs... they love it!

I'm probably going to catch heck for this, but I gotta say it. Fish guts,heads, etc should not be put in your garbage, or any garbage receptacle, which winds up in our landfills. Not a good thing. Why not just freeze them and throw them back in the lake the next time you fish. Feed the aquatic environment, ie catfish, baitfish, etc, and do some good for world environment, ie landfills.

Why not landfills?

Wgpj,
I never thought about the fish guts being bad for a landfill/environment. I assume it would decompose better and faster than most things that get thrown away. Why is it not a good thing? I will defiantly do it different.

You're barking at the wrong tree... 70% of American food are wasted and ended up in the trash... what do you think restaurants do with the leftover? You guessed it trash can...
I say you have more to fear from your neighbors than to worry about landfills...the wild hogs coyotes and turkey vultures are in charge of the bio waste at the landfills.

just curious...why not throw them in the trash, gosh knows the landfills need something that is truly biodegradable! They will also feed the birds that hang out there!
I gotta dry creek bed a couple miles from the house. I figure it will feed the coons, possums and coyotes.

I used to throw my fish remains in Rowlett creek in Allen. They were never there the next day. Racoons, Turtles, etc always disposed of them.

Now days I put them in a compost pile along side my house. The dog has no access to this area and cannot dig them up. If you bury fish under 6-8 inches of compost they will not smell and will be digested in a week to 10 days. This makes excellent fertilizer for my Veggie garden and flower beds. I have an eggplant that looks like a small oak tree that had a crappie put under it when I planted it.

Don't throw the fish in the trash. Your neighbors will hate you.

Catch and release

No can do, the grill would be unemployed.

Yes, organics are thrown into the garbage because no one has come up with a solution to prevent it, ie a way to recycle/compost food scraps for the masses. Since as yet we have no alternative, we must throw organics into our garbage. We have no choice, unfortunately. It takes up landfill space and creates greenhouse gases. The EPA and others are searching for a solution. Once in a landfill and covered, it does not replenish the earth. It gets mixed with chemicals rendering it useless. Again, throwing it back in the lake feeds the ecosystem.

http://compostingcouncil.org/admin/wp-co...ition-Paper.pdf

You eat more sushi than most people I know, Austin

EPA? PFfffffftttttt..... (the sound of greenhouse gasses escaping from my indifference). Heck, the EPA recently destroyed an entire, formerly pristine, river system in Colorado.... and they may have even done it on purpose to justify a new budget...

Seriously though, I do have a veggie garden and I am thinking of watching a youtube video or something to learn how to compost to make my garden really grow.

Go for it Brocephus. Composting is a good thing to do. Beneficial to all and makes yummy veggies.

So I have this friend who is always fighting with the city about trash, breaking down his boxs and lots of other stuff. He lives about 3 blocks away so I put them in his trash can. Problem solved.

I think I will WGPJ. Good idea, thank you. I can also use the veggie scraps left over form the juicer. Should make for nice fertilizer.

This

Thats a funny story!!

If you don't have dogs just dig a hole in your backyard and bury the leftovers. I have heard that if you have dogs you can put their poop on the pile of guts before covering it up and that will keep them away.

I compost fish carcasses in the backyard. Use a vented container and use layers of mowed grass, kitchen garbage, and coffee grounds (Starbucks usually has their used grounds available for this purpose).

If you do it right, there is ZERO smell, and you get really REALLY good gardening soil.

do you believe that it is wrong to cause fish pain with that sharp hook too?

Years and years ago I left a cooler full of fish on the balcony of my apartment. To this day I can't figure out how I forgot about them.

My roommate and I were having a bit of a party a week or so later, the balcony was crowded, when somebody reached down and opened that cooler looking for a beer.

What was in that cooler cannot be unseen. The smell was so bad I think I have blocked out the trauma. The party cleared out quickly and I learned:

A: there is no place in San Antonio to dump something so foul
B: you can't clean a cooler full of rotten fish enough to use it again
C: chicks don't find the odor of rotten fish very appealing

lol Fritz, we let a gar in a cooler for a week and threw cooler and gar soup away. No recovery possible.

When I was a kid, we put our fish heads in the garden when we planted, dig a trench, add fish, cover then add seeds. Best fertilizer ever. We did not have a dog or coon so no issues. We also had a compost pile for grass, leaves, food waste etc, that ultimately produces super black soil to mix in with your beds. If you can do that, I would recommend it.

Here's how I dispose my fish carcass. .. after I grilled my fillet, I placed the carcass on the grill then lower opening vent so fish don't get burned, then close the cover and the charcoal burned out overnight... the next light a little bit more charcoal and grill the the carcass to golden brown, take about 15 minutes...


My dogs love em.

I usually clean them at the lake and throw the carcasses in the lake. If I do bring fish home, I usually have to many to freeze or smoke like people mentioned above. I take the trash can (or cans) and dump everything in the dumpster at my wife's school about 3 blocks away. I used to just take the tall kitchen trash "bag" full of fish guts and throw them in but this backfired on me once. The bag was heavy and when I went to throw it in, the bag ripped open and fish guts went everywhere. It wasn't fun cleaning all that up by hand. Now I just close the bag good and take the whole trash can and dump the bag into the dumpster. I wash the trash can out and everyone is happy. The dumpster is near the playground so the kids are probably not happy on Monday. I only do this once or twice a year. The rest of the time I just clean the fish at the lake.