cleaning whitefish, ..got one today to show

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Saw that the wind forecast was suppose to be calm so got the family out again. It was kind of calm for the first 30min - much windier than forecast so it was not too pleasant (and felt much colder) out there even though the sun was bright and warm. The wife got a WF. I got two small lakers (both released at the side of the boat) so I was skunked today.

Some members have asked me how I clean my WF. So I will post some photos and explain a bit. Sorry, I have no time to do a video nor do I really want to . I don't remember how I came to cutting whitefish this way...maybe a combination of cleaning pike and a few other species and deciding this would work for me. I'm not sure if something like this was ever posted here....if so, ignore. If not, hope it helps. Sorry about the quality of some of the photos....hard to take photos with slimy hands while cutting fish and trying to get things done as quickly as possible. This fish took about 30 min. because of the photos, etc. I can usually finish in about 10-15min. depending on the size of the fish and how many/few distractions are around.

First, the fish (about 19")...

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I'm going to assume people know how to cut the fillets off the fish (still bone-in, skin/scales on).
The knife indicates about where the pin bones end (you should run your finger across that area from tail to head to find where the pin bones are and ends)....I will cut the fillet here.

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Then I will cut the remainder of the fillet in half (so you get 3 roughly equal pieces from one fillet and the whole fish will give you 6 pieces). Note that I have also removed the pelvic fins from the fish when I took the fatty belly meat off as well (for some thicker, meatier whitefish, you can still get a decent piece of meat at the bottom of the belly even after removing the internal belly skin and some fat.

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Looking from the side of the pieces, you can see where the lateral line is (that middle darker (often redder), fattier flesh - looks dark pink here)

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For the tail pieces, just cut down the mid-line and use your knife to follow the lateral line flesh keeping above it

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Do the same for the other side

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I've left the two pieces of meat still attached to the skin for the photo to show but usually I would have removed the first piece of meat from the skin/lateral line before cutting the other side off as well. With practice, there shouldn't be too much lateral line meat on the pieces.

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The centre portion: run the knife down the top side of the pin bones and slice down following the curve of the pin bones and then out so that the piece of meat from the back is removed. This back meat is usually the chunkiest so on larger fish, you can slice down the centre of it to get two thinner pieces or you can slice to within about 1cm from cutting through and then fold it open (like the butterflying of things like shrimp) so it looks like a much larger (but thinner) piece of meat.

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Do the same thing below the pin bones to separate the row of pin bones away from the meat below the pin bones.

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Cut the bottom piece off while following the lateral line (some pulling of the meat againt the blade of the knife also helps to get alot of the lateral line off (I can't explain this way of cutting in words, it's something that some will stumble upon themselves or it's something you learn from watching someone do once). Usually, you will still get some of the deep lateral line flesh in the bottom piece of meat. Just cut on either side of the lateral line tissue to meet in the middle so that you can remove it (a "V" cut).

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...this piece of meat should look like this. That thin piece of meat is the row of pin bones still attached to the skin but flipped over.

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With the portion closest to the head, it's more or less the same as the middle portion

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...again with the "V"-cut to get rid of the deeper lateral line meat in the middle

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The end result of the two non-tail portions should leave you with 4 pieces of meat and the waste should look like this....the skin with scales on, most of the lateral line and a row of pin bones still attached to the skin. The tail portion should leave you with two pieces that get thinner towards the end. In total, you should get 12 pieces of meat (skinless, boneless, lateral line free) from a fish. 4 pieces of skin with lateral line meat and pin bones and 2 tail pieces of skin with lateral line.
I remove the lateral line to reduce the stronger flavours of the fish and of course making it boneless for my little one and also for people who don't eat fish much and so may not be expecting bones.

Hope this helps those who like fish to taste less fishy and also to be bone-free. The size of the pieces work perfectly for my cooking purposes and fits well with the size of the knife blade I use. I also use a smaller/shorter blade knife (like a utility knife) for making some of the initial cuts through the skin/scales to reduce dulling my fillet knife which I usually use only to cut through soft tissue