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Enough of this baloney![sly] Ice, ballpeen hammers, cresent wrenches, clubs, etc., etc., give me a break! Sure you want em dead before cleaning, duh. LOL Removing their spines is a great idea and I'm going to try to remember, hard to do in a tube unless you have a pliers with you but good idea.
Do you want to kill that guy with no fuss or muss? If you've got all those other "tools" then it's no big deal to have a pair of prunning shears or even tree limb "loppers" for the big guys with you. Simply dissingage the head with the loopers!!! ] Think about it. You sure don't have to whack and whack and whack.I know I'm a little [crazy] but ------------ ?
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Over the years as I've brought home catfish, sometimes I would let them sit in the fridge over night before filleting them, and I would get complaints from my wife of opening the fridge the next day and having a catfish still flopping and scaring her. So I bought one of those little bats which I called the cat bat, and I would try to kill the fish by hitting them over the head which really didn't work all that well especially on the big ones. One day while I was trying to kill my days catch before I came home, an old man walked up and told me there was a better way. He said you just slit their throat like you would a deer, and let them bleed for ten or fifteen minutes just before you go home. He said they taste better anyway when they're bled. I've been doing it ever since and it works great. I just lay them on their back, stick my knife under their gills and slice up through them while they're still on the stringer. Usually by the time I stick them in a bag or whatever i'm taking them home in there is hardly any blood left, and hardly any blood on the fillett board, plus they still taste just as good if not better.
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I can relate ! I hate trying to carve into something carefully when it won't stop moving - especially since I like to keep my knives as sharp as possible. So, I always konk the fish in the head - you gotta hit the big ones really hard.
Any hammer will do. A ball peen works excellent, but then, so does a 20 oz. framer's claw hammer, a crowbar, or a large rusted piece of rebar - at least those have worked for me in the past. It should just be something pretty robust that you can swing with a moderate amount of accuarcy. Caution - if you hit it hard enough, you and everything in the immediate area can get splattered, so, you might want to consider covering it with a towel first and/or doing it outside.
Tube Dude has the plan with cutting the fin spines before hand so the fish lies flat - then use an electric fillet knife(I just got one after TD showed me the advantages of them). I found it makes for much better fillets with less waste.
Also mentioned in a prior post here, is the ice method - which I have used since I was a kid. Simply, I fill my cooler with ice before going fishing and leave it in the truck. When I done I throw the fish in the ice water and in short worder they are out like a light. The rapid and large temperature change puts most fish down and keeps them fresher. However, I have found that cats(especially bullheads) are often still moving(sometimes barely) when I put them on the cutting board - that's when the heavy blunt object is employed. I don't want it moving around because my some of my extremities happen to be in the proximity when I'm wielding the sharpest knife in the house or the equilvalant of an electric saw and trying to be somewhat precise about it.
When I was a kid, the "good old boys" dispatched them with an axe and sledge. But, they also did not fillet.
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[size 1] Quote:[size 1] "When I was a kid, the 'good old boys' dispatched them with an axe and sledge. But, they also did not fillet." [/size]
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[cool][#505000][size 1] I have a feeling this post is going to get me in trouble but here goes...... Hey Chuck was that also in the day when you had to make your own fishing line from braided horse hair, and hooks from bent horse shoe nails??? [ ][/size][/#505000]
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[#505000][size 1] Don't feel bad, if it were Tubedude he remembers when the hottest new fishing rod was a longer club!! [cool] [/size][/#505000]
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[#505000][size 1]I hope you both realize I'm just having fun with ya'll!![/size][/#505000]
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[cool][#0000ff]Hey smart [/#0000ff][#ff0000](bleep)[/#ff0000][#0000ff]. Don't be gettin' poisonal wit' da age jokes. What Fishhound was too humble to mention was that the fish of yore were also much bigger than the puny channel cats of Utah. In the part of the country he hails from, and where I have also fished, the big flatheads regularly dine on fish the size that Utah folks is proud to take home as trophies. Can you imagine using a 5 pound carp for bait? Would you believe finding a 10 pound largemouth in a 50 pound flathead? That is real.[/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]Those old boys what fishes fer them monskers don't mess around with no ball peen hammers. They really do use small sledge hammers to "gentle down" the big nasties before they hang them up on meat hooks. Instead of filleting, in the sense we use, they use big butcher knives and just carve the huge slabs of flesh off the carcass. It is a lot like butchering a hog rather than cleaning a fish. [/#0000ff]
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[#0000ff]You wanna talk high tech fish poles, buddy, you just wait until the next time you are floundering around out there anywhere in my vacinity. One of those rod holder tubes I got is a camoflaged surface to surface missile launcher. I prefer to spend the money on pesky PWCs and skiers, but a mouthy tuber will do just fine for target practice.[/#0000ff]
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Fishing line, hooks ? Man, you are a young'un and a rich one too. They used to just hold me by my heels and I had to hold my breath and feel around in the deep holes untill I found one big enough to keep - those were the days where it was a BIG deal to get skunked and a person did not dare come home lest they didn't have empty hands to show for taking the day off from chores ! We never had none of that fancy equipment like poles and such you grew up with.
BTW - Back then, the horses in them parts didn't wear no shoes neither - what's that nail thing you was talking about ? TubeDude used a club ? Now, that would have been handy - wish we would'a thunk that up - he must have growed up in one of them progressive cave clans near a village.
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I've tried the hammer thing. A 28oz. framing hammer, so it's not a "household" hammer. This worked for many a hundred fish, but I had one particularly big kitty that just wouldn't go to a happier place. I actually broke the skull and imbedded the hammer at least an inch, but that thing just wouldn't die.
This is when I figured out a very morbid, yet effective method to getting the cat to give up the meat.
Take a 20 penny nail, and drive it straight through the center of the cat's head and into at least a 2 inch thick plank. this usually ends their fight for life, but even if it doesn't, the kitty doesn't have any choice but to let you take what you want. I make a slice around the head, peel the skin off with pliers, and fillet away. What's left is decent fertilizer if you can handle the smell.
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[cool] [#505000]Hah ha ha ha I see I hit a nerve!!! [/#505000]
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[#505000]I actually spend some years in Oklahoma/Missouri, at one point living a stones throw from Grand Lake of the Cherokees. I wake up every day wishing some enterprising bucket biologist would bring the blue and flathead to Utah waters. Maybe I can convince the DWR that BIG cats will be too big to eat June Sucker but big carp would be on the menu!![/#505000]
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Now that sounds like a good , less messy idea. thanks
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I am glad to see that there are some in here that see abusing the catch as wrong. Just because we kill them does not mean we have to be inhumane. Tearing their spines out or filleting them alive is just sick. And if I saw someone leaving the place with living cats I would gladly call the division as transporting living fish from a water is illegal. There are good products you can buy or do like I did for when I take my kid. Get a nice thick dowel and cut it as long as you want. Then you have about eight feet of material and can have as many clubs as you want. Shakespeare also makes an "ugly club" that is made of fiberglass and I have never seen a fish make it past two whacks with one of those.
Using the animals for our needs does not mean we have to be cruel. We should have enough respect for the resources as to be compassionate and limit their suffering.
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I think in your case, it would be best to imagine the fish as a scaly, orange-brown, sucka whose alias is Mr. Carp. That should minimize any feelings you might have for the fish!
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In Cali, we used to use a hatchet on the beasts. Serves two purposes [ol] [li]Use the flat side to immobilize your meal with a good blow to the noggin.[/li] [li]Use the other side to remove the noggin from the meal[/li][/ol]
Now I don't recommend doing this in the kitchen, the other half usually takes exception to the potential texturing of walls and ceilings - unless you are looking for some retro tye dyed styles for decor!
[laugh]
Pat. I like the removal of spine/barb concept, it will definitely reduce my expenses as it relates to antiseptics and wound patches!
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[size 1]Leonard, I totally agree with the need to be humane in dispatching of catfish and I will add all fish and other animals. I remember when I was around age twelve that we took a new neighbor kid, of the same age as me, fishing with us to Utah Lake. My mother caught a carp and that kid took the carp, and using his pocket knife, he repeatedly stabbed it for several minutes, even long after it was dead. The sight of that experience still disturbs me after over 40 years.[/size]
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[size 1]You also wrote, [/size]
[size 1]"And if I saw someone leaving the place with living cats I would gladly call the division as transporting living fish from a water is illegal."[/size]
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[size 1]Leonard, rather than having someone arrested probably purely because catfish are hardy and the person is merely taking them home for dinner, wouldn't it be far better to share your knowledge of how to humanely take the life of a catfish?[/size]
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