Watch as this man cleans a carp with the fast and smooth efficiency of a guy who's cleaned thousands of fish before. You'll want to watch this video a few times.
Years ago, folks would have scoffed at you for trying to fillet and eat a carp. They were, and often still are, considered a trash fish... something for folks to bowfish and bury in the garden.
But nowadays there is a growing movement in the U.S. to elevate carp to the status of respected game fish, a position that it does indeed hold in much of the rest of the world.
Part of that effort has to do with preparing carp for the table, and to prepare a carp first you have to clean a carp. Watch as this clearly expert fish cleaner makes short work of a fat carp, ultimately producing what look like totally desirable and succulent fillets of juicy carp meat.
The video is a little blurry and there's no sound to it. It's just a guy, his knife and a carp. But man, can he ever use that knife. I am blown away by his ability to cleanly and seemingly effortlessly remove the skin of the fish.
It also looks like he's saving the roe when he removes the innards.
The knife he's using also looks a bit stouter than your average filleting knife. This makes sense as carp are a heavy boned critter. In fact, at one point he turns to a meat cleaver to take care of the thick rib bones near the head.
I would be curious to see what he does with the fillet slabs after this point, but unfortunately these four minutes are all we have.
Did I just say four minutes? It would have taken me four minutes to simply scale or skin a carp!
Like what you see here? You can read more great articles by David Smith at his facebook page, Stumpjack Outdoors.
NEXT: Giant Catfish and Carp Fishing in Legendary Abbey Lakes, Part II
