Make sure you have a SHARP knife. I use a 8 inch blade. Start by rinsing the fish, you can run your hand along the scales, to try to remove a little of the slime and rinse it away. You don't want any funk touching the meat. Make the first cut behind the head, right where the stripes start.

Run your (sharp) knife down the back about 1/8 inch above the dorsal fins. Your knife should be going in about 2 inches at this point. Do not use a lot of force here, if you are, then you are cutting into bone, and other nasty stuff. If you cut to close to the spine, you will cut thru a lot of arteries, and your meat will get too bloody. Start shallow, and pull the meat up with your thumb, and you can see where you are.

When you get beyond the stomach, it's ok to push the knike all the way through. Again, don't try to push down to hard here, else you will just cut through a bunch of crap.

Pick up the meat with your thumb, and slowly run the knife along the bones, as you cut the meat away. Keep checking to make sure you are not cutting too close, but not wasting any meat.

Continue cutting the meat away from the fish. You will run into the rib cage, and again, if you cut too hard, you will get bones in the meat, and your kids will choke. Then your wife will never let you fix striper again. You'll be back to the store paying 9.99/lb for salmon!

You can't really get around the rib cage all the way, so just cut along the ribs until you see that there is no meat left there. Then, cut the meat off the fish as show in the picture, being careful not to cut into the guts, yet not to waste meat. You will get better at this with more practice.

RINSE your fish, and your work area clean before starting on the other side. Repeat the same for the other side.

Did I mention that this person should be wearing mesh gloves. You will jack yourself up bad if you cut yourself with a filet knife.

.

.

Some people get to this point, and leave the end of the meat connected at the tail, flip it down, and it helps hold the skin as you filet. I don't like to do this because I don't want the funky stuff to touch the meat, plus you need a really big work area to do that, it's up to you.

Sharpen your knife. Hold on to the smaller end closest to where the tail was, and cut the meat off the skin.

The trick here is to leave about 1/8 inch of meat on the skin. It's tough to do, but with practice, and a sharp knife, you will get the hang of it. You don't want to shave the meat off the skin. The meat is funky close to the skin. Your guests won't eat your funky striper.

.

You can stop and pull the meat off the skin to see how you are doing. If you see a lot of red or silvery stuff on the meat, you are cutting to close. If you see a lot of white on the skin, you are not cutting close enough.

Perfect! That's a damn nice job. Now let's get rid of the vien.

Again, the trick here is to simply cut all the red away, without wasting meat. Some people make a small cut at one end, then grad the vien, and pull it out with their hand. I don't like to do that because it leaves red stuff, with makes the meat taste fishy.

You will end up with two strips of meat here after you cut out the vein.

You may see traces of white or red stuff on the meat. Be sure to cut that off. I know it's a pain, but it will taste better if you do.

You can then cut up the meat as you wish, depending on what you want to do with it, frying, baking, grilling, etc...

One 12-14lb fish will easily feed my family of 4. Stay tuned for my next article, "how to cook stiper"!