Here is a great way to clean Panfish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pxf3ZP4WU0

My buddy and I thought we were pretty good at filleting crappie with a knife until we saw some retired folks using an electric carving knife at the cleaning table.

,<derail>
I bet that between my brother and I we caught a couple hundred thousand crappie, bluegill and perch.We would skin and gut. Grandma flayd'em out.

Grandma had a house in Moses Lake. Dad (divorced) would send us over every summer. We would fish after breakfast. Then we would go back out after lunch. After dinner we went fishing with Grandpa. Did that every summer when I was a kid. Same plan when Grandpa worked on the 3rd Powerhouse on Grand Coulee.

Grandpa taught me how to driftfish in Potholes Canal (which he helped build). As soon as I could get through the barb wire it was fish on. We drifted nightcrawlers on #4 worm hooks with around a 3/8 oz lead. Short fat rainbows nearly every cast (or not at all, it was like that) . They were short from battling that current , and fat from eating all the perch etc that got killed going through the dragonteeth behind the dam. That all changed when they put in the powerhouse. I have tried a few times over the years since they have all passed , but I don't think I have ever hooked up again.

Give Sebastes an electric knife and a bucket full of Perch and he will show you how to make his "Perch McNuggets" FAST!

Hey gutz I may have known you in a previous life or maybe this one. Dad was Larson AFB when I was a lad and we fishave that canal for those fat bows and perch in the cut out.

<derail continued>
I wonder if we were ever there at the same time ...

One day we were on the Canal and we saw a school of Perch surfacing /circling in the eddy behind a boulder where we would net trout. Patiently my brother waited for them to come up and he netted like 50. He could barely lift them. We dumped them in the back of my way cool Chevy Sprint (50mpg!) on some newspaper.

The Canal was/is as dangerous as anywhere you could ever fish. Deep water moving fast with little chance to get out, rattlesnakes, barb wire, mosquitos and yellowjackets. My brother told me about a time he fell in, years after it had happened. He was swept nearly down to Soda Lake before he managed to get up on the bank, something like 2 miles.

When we were young, we used to sit on the I90 bridge and toss little red or green plastic skirted 1/4 jigs and catch crappie on nearly every cast. There often would be a black woman with a five gallon bucket who would give us a dime for every crappie we gave her. We caught 100's.

One day under the my brother and I each caught a Bluegill that was 15-16" . Had we known, we could have broke the State record. Twice!

Here is a picture of my Brother (RIP) with a Smallie I caught.



All of that ended when St Helens blew. After the mountain blew the crappie were greatly diminished, but the Trout fishing was pretty awesome off the bridge. Slip float 4-16' , nightcrawler and a 3/4 oz lead. Huck it out as far as you could and hang on. BIG Rainbows.

My brother in law is pretty good with an electric but it's a little more messy.

willcfish must think he is Jesus... raising all these stupid posts from the dead and all...

He must have had his oxygen bottle refilled recently. (?)