Will someone please explain to me the different ways to bleed a catfish and the reason why.

I am not the best for this BUT here it goes
1. diff ways to bleed cut the tail off and let it stay in the water. hang it up on a tree and remove the tail. gut it and let all of the blood come out.
2. you do it for the taste it makes the meat better and not as muddy or gamy.
This is what I know of it. there may be other ways but this is what I know.
John

Cut one of the gills and let it bleed out in the live well. This does not work on ice, it must be in the water.

Hang up and cut off the tail. Helps if it is still live

Put them on ice alive. All of the blood will go to the organs and go away from the meat. Hanging one and cutting the artery just above the tail works good but is very messy.

Aw, there ain't no need in breedin them thare fish, just skin em and fillet em, cookem, and eatum. You only need to bleed out a pond fish, to get the mud taste out of them. A regular run of the mill blue, or channel cat won't be bad to eat. Even the bigger fish are good to eat, just make the peices smaller to cook. I have cut a filet in half, thickness wise, and then into fish strips. Up to 44 pounds of blue cat and 36 pounds of flatty. No bleeding was done on either.

I disagree totally. But to each his own. I have cleaned hundreds of fish over 40 pounds. All the way up to 100 lbs. It is like cleaning a deer. The meat taste as good as you clean it. Just because you bleed a fish out does not mean it want taste swampy. You have also got to trim the red meat off of the fillet. Trim the fat and then rinse and then it is ready to cut up into frying pieces. I try and cut mine in 1 inch thick and about 4 inches long. Those that dont bleed out a cat usually dont cut out the red meat and like that nasty swamp taste. I for one dont when I am done my fillets are solid white with no red or dark coloration to the fillet.

That is what drives me nuts about eating catfish in some resturants. If I bite in and find any brown streak, it makes me gag. I can't stand a dirty filet. Solid white, or to the dogs.

When I clean fish for my clients, right before I head to the boat ramp I take all the fish out of the livewell and hook up my electric fillet knife and slit the gills and throw them back in the livewell and make sure the water pump is on so that they're fully submerged and this does a couple of things for me and the clients. when the clients get the fish fillets home they're not so hard to clean up as they aren't a bloody mess, for one thing. The filleting is a lot cleaner as they've bled out in the livewell. they are also almost dead by the time I get back to the ramp also so that makes it a lot easier as I don't get beat up nearly as bad as I would if they were all still alive and frisky. I used to cut the tail off to bleed them but almost whacked my thumb off doing that when a fish flopped just about the time I was slicing through the tail and if it woulda sliced through the bone on the fish I woulda lost my thumb ... the worst part about it was I still had all those fish to clean even though my thumb was whacked plum near to the bone. it's a lot easier to slit a gill or two with the electric fillet knife also ... trying to cut the gills with a regular knife is kinda hard to do also.

I'm with you on the red part of the meat and the fat being trimmed off too. My filets are just plain ole white meat. I like mine cut into smaller peices like 1" wide by about 3" long about 1/2" thick. They cook faster and have a little more breading on them. Man i'm starting to get hungry for catfish and i don't have any in the freezer. I think i may head out and catch a few this weekend.

I learned this trick Tuna fishing in Hawaii.....

Cut the tail off hitting the back artery now the boat captain had a hose on his boat and pumped water into the mouth of the fish until all the blood came out but I dont have a water hose on my boat so I putem in the live well until I get home I nail them to a tree cut the tail and place the water hose in there mouth usually the blood comes out and I let the water run until it comes out clear....hope that helps some...

Fish ON!

For give my ignorance.... Gill cutting? Do you guys just cut one gill sever a bunch how is this procedure done?