Blue Gills as survival food

600 bluegill fillets is really not that much fish. That is 20 quart ziploc bags with 30 little fillets in each bag.

That's why. Filleting that way wastes a lot of fish. To each his own, but I don't like to waste.

 

It's been driving me nuts!

Wondering what the hell Bluegill are....yes...I know they are fish...but...

On the basis that a picture's better than a thousand words...and a video clip's worth a bunch more than a single still picture....I trawled the Youtube clips about bluegills for the benefit of all who are as curious as I about Bluegills.

General Information about Bluegills

Bluegill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Catching Bluegills




Filleting Bluegills

Bluegill Filleting - YouTube

Fillet a Fish : Bluegill - YouTube


Cooking Bluegills

Pan-fried Bluegill Demonstration from Walleye Direct - YouTube

Beer-battered fish - YouTube


Who the hell's looking at the damned Bluegills???

Sexy Girl Gutting Fish (How To Clean & Cook Pan Fish) - YouTube

 

As a kid, I used to take small bluegills, in shallow stream-pools, in late summer, with a paddle! Just smack the surface of the water real hard with the flat of the paddle, and up they float. Could be done with a couple of whittled flat sticks, rigged at 90 degree angle to another stick. Only useful in small pools, of course, but quick and easy.

 

Yep, learned them tricks in juvie hall. Before he graduated to the big time. Felon.

 

All that smacking and thrashing about in my local lakes would likely draw the attention of the big bull gators....... I prefer being the hunter/fisher, not 'the bait'......

 

So now I can do fillets of blue gills with the help of Youtube. I'm glad to learn.

 

I use one of them electric knives and fillet all the Bream n Crappie we catch while the Oil in a propane deep fryer is heating up out by the table in the back deck.

DD drops em in batter and starts frying em while the drinks are cooling down and oldest son is doing hush puppies by droppin batter and taking em up.

pretty quick ya have a heck of a fish fry.

You can smoke fish or put em in milk cartons with water n freeze em if you have a nice big freezer.

Problem is we gather up a good mess n have a fish fry. Seldom much left off of em.

I do have a pond that has Cat, bream and bass in it. The county agent got me the fingerlings to stock, and we turned em out when we got the new patch of land and they have been doing fine. I think I will try to stock a new batch everytime they give us fingerlings since I haven't yet figured out if the pond lends itself to them spawning easy.

Might as well get back some of that tax money they loot off me while I can. They have trouble getting people to take the fingerlings> I don't get it.

You can get palm size bream out of there and 1 - 2 pound cat or bass already.

So I store my fish survival food on the hoof (fin) in my pond.

I have read of people keeping catfish in barrels and feeding them worms that are fed the droppings of rabbits. OR something like that. apparently it works itself into a system that one thing supports another.

I am having trouble getting any of my systems to be totally self supporting but I do try to get them to work together like companion plantings and that there permaculture stuff.

It isn't a destination as much as a journey I'd say.

 

blue gills ???

I live in the nothwest, there are blue gills but there really really small and and hard to get. as a survival food, you can dig up a worm and catch trout , or sit on bottom and catch sucker fish all day . you would need 40 blue gills to feed a fam, ive caught sucker fish all day on accident, and there 4 times the size. record on the down low, 96 rainbows in 6 hours me and 1 other guy

 

The Mr wanted to know what I thought I was doing dragging a generator and wire onto the boat. "Fishin" sez I. Made me put it back in the garage.

Man has no sense of humor...

 

Yep, and the game warden ain't gonna buy "in case we gotta jump start the Evinrude"either.

 

Bluegills hereabouts tend to be largish - I like 'em hand-sized, and I have BIG hands......
Two or three make a good meal, along with the fixin's and side-dishes.

The trick is to find their beds in the lake.

 

ok, you guys and gals have convinced me to try eating them. We always catch and release the blue gills and sunnies while looking for bass and perch....

 

They taste fantastic, but are a pain to clean. When the kids were little they would catch 20-30 of them and insist on eating them (living off the land spirit). Wife insisted no bones left in the fish, so I was left filleting all those little fish. Wound up with a huge mixing bowl of 1 inch by 2 inch fillets. Honestly, it was a really good memory with the kids.

 

That small, my Dad would fry them crispy, then eat bones and all. Kinda like Salmon or Sardines, but a different process.

 

Chinooks are good eating but so are all the varieties of sunfish.

 

Its an amazing idea of having these food items but more intake of these food items can be dangerous to health. As the sea food mostly contains mercury in them and its a heavy metal.
Gradual eating of these items increases the amount of mercury in the body. So be careful in having these foods.

 

Never heard of heavy metals in Bluegills...... just sayin'.

 

good sized bluegill and other sunfish are worth every bit of effort to catch and clean when it comes to eating