Lot's of good advice above. Cold fish, hot oil. Egg mix, mustard or mayo to bond the breading to the dry fish. Also try using a wok for frying. They are cheap and work great. Get a good oil thermometer too.

Also dont cover hot fried food. This steams it and makes it mushy

I use an old cast iron pan, Canola Oil, and heat it till it starts to smoke, then bump the heat down a bit. Egg Wash and Cajun Fish Fry. Always flaky inside, and crispy outside. Love me some crappie, never fails to please. Although I do love catfish too.

z289sec

Crappie and Blue Cat are about the best eating you will find here down south. Up in that cold water part of the world, the walleye and little tiger perch are pretty good too!

(just my opinion)

Tight lines - stay safe everyone.

Ken

Pat dry your filets so they are dry from any residual water and then mix mustard and Louisiana hot sauce in a bowl to dip them in . After that coat them in a 50/50 mix of plain corn meal of your choosing and Louisiana fish fry mix in the blue bag . Fry them in a cast iron skillet with peanut oil but don’t try to cover the filets in oil only fill the pan with enough oil to cover half the way up on the filet . Get the grease as hot as you can without it smoking . Hope this helps

Also use two forks to flip your filets and you can cut them into nuggets or in half so the are easier to work with as they tend to break sometimes when you flip them .

I dip my fillets in a egg wash then in crushed saltine crackers and fry in peanut or conola oil at 350° for 4 minutes in my fry daddy.

my grandmother used crackers, she smashed them between wax paper using a big roller...

My Fryer can be loaded :), but I only put in 2-4 at a time, and the temp must be 350+.
note, also putting a small dash of salt in your bags of fish when freezing (Crappie) will make them a bit less Mushy. JMO

Now thats a fryer!

That sucker looks like it would fix up a pretty good mash too.

Is that a dog or your arm?

Also, that fryer is AWESOME!