how do you take the red meat off of the striper fillet? i have seen it done on a guide trip before, i think i recall him just pulling it off/out a certain way. seems that the fillet ended up in two after he did this.

can anyone please explain, post a link or even do a photo step-by-step for this process, or any other to help a striper newbie out? i hope i'm not asking too much, but i love the meat but the red stuff HAS to go.

i also will post a quick report for texoma, as it is why i need to know: fished from 9-4 12/23, somewhere around 30+ fish, largest 23 inches. all caught on jigheads with fluke type baits in white. fish were shallow early, 25-40 feet in the afternoon. the afternoon was MUCH better as far as action for us. kept 14 total between two of us for a fish fry!

thanks in advance for your help TFFer's!

j

The best way is to send it FEDEX to me for cleaning... Once cleaned I'll return half your catch...

Sorry, couldn't help it and couldn't resist..

Merry Christmas...

Heres as good a shots as any around .. for filleting striped bass

http://www.striper.net/articles_filleting_a_striper.htm

HTH

here's my report for texoma 12/23

Me and a buddy wore them out yesterday west of the 377 bridge.
I was catching some very nice overs on chartruse 2oz slabs when my graph was blacked out. Also caught a bunch of box fish on 1oz little george long body's while my buddy, was tho'in his tried and true shad colored rattle trap.
Lost many fish for some reason due to short strikes or whatever, had a BUNCH of baits that looked like they were skinned down to the flesh.

We litterally could not keep 4 live baits in the water for several hours.. all our fish came close to rocky shorelines, sitting in 25 to 30ft of water.

Highlight of the day I guess was, my buddie stuck an 11 lb carp in the tail .... that sucker peeled a bunch of drag and fought hard for several minutes... We were both so excited we were shakin thinkin we had on the "big one" (c:

Yesterday was a great day for us on Texoma.

tight lines

tha BassRustler

I just trim the red meat with a filet knife.

Great report rustler

There's two tricks to getting rid of the red meat in a striper:

1. When you're skinning the fillet, don't scrape the skin clean. Leave about 1/8th of an inch of tissue on the skin. That will eliminate most of the red "meat", and should leave your fillet with just the red radial line.

2. Start at the tail end of the fillet, and make two parallel cuts, one on each side of the radial line about one inch long. Now grab the TOP part of the fillet including the radial line in one hand, and pull it TOWARD you while you pull the bottom cut AWAY from you. Then grab the radial line and pull it TOWARD you while you're pulling the top half of the fillet AWAY from you.

This works best when your fillets are very cold and firm. The radial line is wider on the outside of the fillet than on the inside. That's why the "pull toward, pull away" action. If they're good and firm, the red radial line will separate nice and clean from the white meat.

mark
www.texomasportfishing.com

The comment by Mark above was something we did with Walleye up north and i tried it on Striper and it works great to remove the red meat.

Mark1's process is the best I know about. I have found if you put the fish on ice immediately and keep cold it becomes easy to remove the blood meat. Good luck and keep your grease hot!

I just spray the fillets with water as soon as I fillet them. This does not remove the "red meat" but takes a ton of the fat off them. Just put them in a container and hit em with high pressure water till it stops foaming.

Take about all that "strong taste" away with out the PIA of cutting the red line out. On bigger striper you can take the time to cut it out but for most just spraying it is more then good enough,

Stick your thumb into the meat along the side of the red radial line. Thumb nail next to the red line holding the bigger part of the meat in that hand and pull it apart. Now thumb on the other side of the red line and pull the red meat out of the second piece. The meat will seperate on the red line. I little practice and you will be an expert.

Hey Jeff,

Not any one thing will work for everybody so here is my way. When cleaning sand bass which I hope is like cleaning striper just on a larger scale. I just pinch the red meat and slice underneath the red stripe. Example is pinch your skin and picture taken a filet knife and just trim under the pinch and there you go. This will leave very little red but not enough to taste. Trust me if my wife says she can't taste the fishy taste then you won't either. Try it and see what you think.

Take red off using a ele knife.then soak filets in salt water
10 min OR leave skin on put filet on gas BBQ grill skin down,
spray with butter/add herbs,cover with tin foil,cook 30-45min

be careful, i'll take you up on that!