Fillet Crappie: Mike Hehner demonstrates one good way to fillet crappie.

One of the reasons crappies are so popular because people like to eat them.

Filleting crappies to get the maximum amount of meat can be real art. Lindner Media employee Mike Hehner one of the best fillet-men on staff. Everybody has their favorite way of cleaning fish whether it’s with an electric knife or a standard blade. For cleaning a batch of crappies, Hehner prefers using a standard bladed knife.

Here’s his process:

What works best for me is either a small knife or a real thin-bladed knife like a Bubble Blade 8-inch Whiffie.

The first step is to pull the fin back cut behind the gill, down to the backbone and then you run along the backbone.

Then push the knife through go out the tail cut back to the ribcage while pressing down.

And then you just go around the edges. Boom, one side is down.

Complete the same on the other side back to the ribcage on the backbone. You can feel the blade run along the ribcage. Simply go along the edge and around the ribcage. Now you have two pieces.

After that what, I like to do is take the skin off the fillet. Finally, there a little bones located just above the ribcage that we just went around there called the epipleural bones. On a bigger fish, you can feel them and they usually don’t fry out so I’ll take this knife and run it and cut this little parallel strip out for a perfectly boneless fillet.