I clean them if I am going to eat them the day they are caught. Otherwise, I release them.
I can see that, especially if your preferred recipes (grilling, frying) require them to hold together. Scaling them and leaving the skin on helps them hold together through a freeze-thaw cycle, as does freezing them quickly. We use the basket in a chest freezer to get rapid freezing.
Also, fish that don't hold together well after freezing are a great choice for fish tacos. These specimens were caught in a pond that was cut off from the GoM and likely would not survive the winter if released.