I’ve never cooked fish whole with the skin on. I usually fillet. I caught some babies this morning and decided to give it a try. Any tips?

As a kid, I ate many Bream and crappie scaled, gutted and fried. It's really good. Bass are no different.

Either way..... they’re delicious. Those loo like 2.5-3 pounders. Perfect eating size.

Scale em.

Already scaled and gutted. Ready for the grease tonight. I’ll probably just cook a couple at a time to maintain temp. I thought about pan frying them. But that’s too much trouble since I’ll already have the fish cooker fired up. May save one or two to pan fry for breakfast.

When cooking the fillets, start skin side down.

Knock yourself out

Not one of the fish I would keep for frying. Saltwater Specs or Freshwater Crappie or catfish. Just better eating. Bass a little too fishy for me.

I’m cooking the little ones whole.

Release to the grease

I prefer skin off but scaled, gutted, and fried is good too!

I’ve never seen fish filleted like that. Looks like you left the ribs on but cut off the long portion of the fillet.

I don’t know where you’ve seen fish filleted before but that wasn’t the problem. The fish I fried whole still had the bones in them and it caused a problem.

I grew up eating bass bone-in and with the skin on. Today, I'd probably fillet them like a striper (and not eat the belly meat).

Fillet and leave the skin on . Fire up the charcoal grill . Salt and pepper and put garlic butter on while cooking .