robow - I will be demo-ing two ways to deal with the bones in the filets. One is to debone the filets, and the other, quicker and easier if you are frying the fish, is to make what I call fry-cut strips (or, sometimes, we call them flying carp wings, and cook them with a hotwing sauce). I'll be making a video on Friday of the frycut strips part. I don't know if the video will include the deboning process. To make the frycut strips, you simply cut the fish in long strips, diagonally, WITHOUT CUTTING THE BONES. These long strips are then rolled in cornmeal coating and fried. When they are cooked, just break the strip in half and the bones will usually stay in one half of the strip. Eat the boneless half. Then grab the bones sticking out of the boney strip and pull them out and put them on a plate reserved for that purpose. Now that piece is also boneless, so eat it. then repeat. For the piece back by the caudal peduncle, the bones are smaller so this method does not work as well. But they also are straight (not y-shaped) and near the outside of the fish in that section. So I just filet those little bones off like they were anotherskin, and have a boneless piece from that section.

Deboning is better shown than described, so maybe someone should bring a camera and film it, in case only the frycut portion makes it into the INHS video.

I also have some tricks about skinning the fish. For silver carp and bighead carp, when skinning, you often leave those silver dollars of skin on the outside of the filet, which really slows things down. To avoid this problem, cut the filets in half lengthwise before you skin the filets. Then, using a regular filet knife (not an electric) cut the exposed red meat and the skin off of each half of the filet. You should bend the knife a bit as you do this, bending it so that it bends around the white-red meat junction, and sawing as you cut the filet off. In this way you do not waste meat, there will be no silver-dollars of skin on the meat, and you pull the red meat and the skin off in one swoop. Note that this is probably NOT the right procedure to use with grass carp or black carp or common carp, which have large scales (making the lateral line cut through the skin is therefore slower) and also have less problem with the silver-dollar issue.

I'll wait for the demo!

LOL ...and the free food!

Rob, We'll do our best to get video of the demo.

Duane, don't you get your lab help to help clean?


Robow, there is a bone up near the dorsal area that's like a christmas tree and you can do nothing about it. The rest of the bones are y-bones and easy to get around. The process Duane developed is quite simple, but much easier to understand if seeing the process live (or taped) than from reading about. Works really well on 15# fish and up. Below that, I prefer them boneless.

Well, the professional video thing fell through for lack of money, but INHS will probably do an amateurvideo anyway. We are looking for funding for a professional video, though. They want 8K to do the video, and we don't have that much. We might scrape it up, a thousand here and a thousand there, with collaborators, though.

$8 grand??!! Yikes.

I'll be there with my little HV20 cam. Hardly professional, but I should be able to capture the basics of your cleaning methods.

Duane,
The one I cleaned last night, after I had my initial two fillets with skin still attached, I turned the fillet over so now flesh is side up and of course the lateral line or natural separation is very evident. I slid my knife down that line creating both a superior and inferior length long strip. I find that it is much easier to skin them out that way and easier to cut out the dark red meat along that lateral line that runs deeper into the fillet than theother more diffusesurface red meat. So now I have 4 length long strips. Which do I make those diagonalcuts? The inferioror superior strip? (I'm assuming the superior strip)but do I go the length of the fillet or concentrate more towards the head like say half way backand then forward? Do I angle the cut toward the head or away and what approximate angle? Thanks for your help. Oh and because I'm waiting to make the final cuts, they're sitting in my fridge soaking so I hope you're not going to tell me that I'm better off going from cleaning table to fryer.

Are you still talking about cleaning carp? or dissecting a cadaverl?

I'll videotape for only $4k; and that will include a new camera.

Both the superior/top/dorsal and the inferior/bottom/ventral halves of each filet have bones. The ventral half does not have bones in the ribcage portion unless you cut through the ribs, so you can cut that section off. It is boneless already.

Now take the top/dorsal half of the filet. Lets say you are starting with the left side of the fish.The first time you do this, just to see the angle of the bones and their spacing, we are going to do the first step like you were going to debone the fish filet. Put the side that was closest to the bones down and the side that was closest to the skin up, and the end that was closest to the head to your left. Starting about an inch to an inch and a half behind (posterior to) the flat, foward end of the filet, take your filet knife and, holding it parallel with thecutting board,remove a strip of meat from the outside of the fish that exposes the bones. You'll end up with a strip of boneless meat about as thick as a bluegill filet but 1.5 " wide and almost the length of the filet. You should be able to see the direction of the bones now. That is theangleyou need to make your cuts in.

Starting about halfway down the flat end of the filet, cut a triangle of meat off the top front corner. This triangle will include that christmas tree bone that fishhunter was talking about. Use the angle of the exposed bones. This is not an equilateral triangle. I'm going to say offhand that the top-front corner of the triangle is about 90 degrees, and the bottom front corner of the triangle is about 70 degrees, and the back-top corner is about 20 degrees. Then just keep cutting strips off at about that same angle, cutting between the bones. You want strips that are about a half inch thick, containg maybe four bones each.If youhit bone, do not cut through it. Try to let your knife slide between the bones, rather than cutting the bones. It is important to not cut the y-branch off the bones, either. If you hit one of those, that means you don't have the vertical angle of your knife right. Don't cut through it. Just cut around it, and after the rest of the cut is made, pull the strip off the bone. This will leave a little point of bone sticking out. You can just fry the piece that way or cut the sticking-out bone off and then fry the meat. It doesn't matter. When you get back to the caudal peduncle (the narrow area near the tail fin) the bones are very near the surface of the meat, and the bones are straight pins without the "y" structure. At that point, I just turn the filet over and cut the bones off that section like it was another piece of skin. That yields a boneless piece.

Now repeaton the bottom half of the filet, which has the rib cage section already removed. Treat the caudal peduncle the same as above.

Can't thank you enough Duane, that post took a lot of thought and work. I'll go at it as you describe. BTW, sorryfishpoint, occasionally the degree in zoology seeps out and I do appreciate your comments above.