Best handling practices are straightforward: Catch quickly (don’t extend the battle), kill immediately, bleed immediately, and chill and keep chilled. But some of what we do in the field must be a compromise between best practice and what’s possible. This double brace of walleyes was from an hour-long mid-May morning wading session on the Upper Mississippi River. A cooler with ice was a bit distant in the vehicle, so on this cool day these fish were caught quickly, killed immediately and bled, and then laid in grass along the bank, to be placed in an icy slurry in the cooler a bit later on.
January 08, 2025
By Doug Stange, Editor in Chief
Best practices for keeping our catch in the best possible shape have pretty much been worked out, although, as is often the case with changing protocol, it may take a generation before most anglers consider it necessary to employ them. It took a generation for catch and release to catch on; another generation for selective harvest to reign supreme.
Basically, fish that are to be kept should be quickly caught and immediately killed and bled, before being placed in an ice slurry in a cooler. Admittedly, though, all kinds of circumstance conspire to sometimes make it difficult to execute best handling practices. Too, many anglers probably are perfectly happy with the way they deal with their fish—and they taste just fine, thank you very much. I get that. Up to you in the end. One might also observe that fish taste is somewhat subjective—and surely cooking methods like deep frying can be a great equalizer for fish that aren’t that well handled.
But, catch quickly, kill immediately, bleed immediately, and chill and keep chilled. Vital steps. Let’s have look.
Kill Immediately Catching quickly and killing immediately reduces the stress fish go through before they die. Stress reduction is important because stress elevates certain chemical processes in the cells that affect the quality of the flesh. That’s simple enough, but to understand what’s going on we need to consider the effects of rigor in fish.
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Rigor is short for rigor mortis, which all living things experience when they die. At death muscles are soft and pliable, but with time they contract and the body stiffens. Eventually rigor passes, but it, too, takes time, in fish sometimes as much as two days or more, depending on various factors. (A day and maybe two at most seems a reasonable bet for most of the fish we deal with that are well handled.)
It may seem counterintuitive, but fish can actually be too fresh to work well in some of our cooking. That is, fish often cook up and taste better when they’re cooked post-rigor than when eaten while in rigor—best handling practices being the same.
You’ve seen rigor in action. You put fish into a cooler to flip and flop and eventually suffocate. By the time you get to the cleaning table several hours later they’re stiffly contorted into the shape they took in the cooler. That’s rigor.
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To fillet some of those fish you need to bend them back into shape, which tears muscle tissue and causes “gaping” in the fillets (the muscle myomeres separate), which decreases the quality of the flesh, likely it’s taste, and affects what commercial industry folks call “mouth feel,” or its texture.
Or, having cleaned your perch an hour before, you dust them in flour, lay them neatly into hot oil in the pan, only to have them contort into a pup tent shape that makes it difficult to fry the fillets uniformly. That’s the result of cooking fish that are so fresh they’re in pre-rigor, so the muscles still contract vigorously when they hit the hot oil.
That’s the “rigor status” of the fish we’re usually working with when we do shorelunch. Most of the fish we eat usually taste great; they just don’t cook up as well as they would if we waited a day or two for them to enter and come out of rigor. But then those fish often are cut into portions and deep fried, so the contortions don’t matter. And we still typically like the results.
But some fish cooked while they’re in pre-rigor and, especially, in rigor are tough, or at least tougher, with flesh that’s springy and chewy instead of beautifully flakey. This, I think, is the more so true for “denser” fish like catfish, burbot, perch, and pike. This is also true for fish in poor condition just after spawning—and fish that are older and on the decline in overall body condition. They can really be tough and sometimes almost inedible—and tasteless.
As mentioned, the cause of rigor rests with chemical processes in the cells. How quickly rigor sets in, how intense it is, and how long it lasts is influenced by how much a fish struggles before it dies or is dispatched and also how it’s handled overall.
One of the most suspect ways to handle fish is to toss them into “the box” and let them suffocate (as they flop around), which increases stress, which elevates lactic acid, which speeds up the onset of rigor, intensifies it, and can increase that gaping in flesh, which decreases the quality of your fish.
Putting fish in a good livewell probably is a step better, but it also adds stress, especially in a crowded well and in rough weather. And then typically you still have to fight to get them out of the well.
Killing Method One way to kill fish is with a sharp blow to the skull and brain just behind the eyes. A 1-inch wooden dowel cut about 15 inches long works—and there are other tools marketed as fish bonkers and priests.
Fish bonkers include a hammer handle from a hardware store or a Baker Tools Billy Club. Brain spiking tools include knives with short stiffer blades, or ikejimi spikes, which often are hollow, allowing a wire to slide into the shaft and down the fish’s spinal column to destroy it. Finally, an Extrada Ike Jimi Kit has a spike in a protective sleeve, along with a wire. For more on ikejimi, visit ikejimifederation.com . Spiking a fish’s brain is even more foolproof than bonking and much easier to perform on smaller fish like panfish. One option is a knife with a stiff blade about 4 inches long. Longer fillet knives are too flexible, but the smallest Rapala Fillet Knife (4 inches) works on most fish. I have used a Gage Deck Knife, which has a stiff 4-inch serrated blade. It’s available from Grundens.
Brain spikes work even better. The brain is just back from and slightly above in-line with the eye, although it varies a bit from one fish species to the next. Once you’re familiar with using a spike it becomes the most effective method overall.
The brain spikes I’m using are tools used in a Japanese method of fish slaughter called ikejime, which goes a step farther than spiking . An ikejime spike is hollow, allowing a wire to slide down the shaft past the already destroyed brain, into and down the spinal cord. Destruction of the brain and spinal cord stops all residual messaging from those organs to the muscles and postpones the onset of rigor and it’s intensity, which experts agree produces the best possible fish. Ikejimi is catching on fast. One great informational source is ikejimefederation.com.
Bleeding Immediately post spiking (or post blow) to kill a fish, the large blood vessel running through the isthmus area between the throat of the fish and the lower gills should be cut to bleed the fish. Spiking kills the fish but there’s still plenty of blood pressure to make bleeding work.
It works to cut through the isthmus, but it’s just as efficient to cut the soft tissue immediately behind the gills (just in front of the “collar,” you might say) from the throat at the isthmus about halfway up on both sides of the fish. This, too, severs the large blood vessels between the heart and gills. Make a cut on each side of the fish and let the fish bleed out for 30 seconds or so in the livewell, if you’re in a boat. On the bank just hold the fish for a moment in the water or lay it gently on the grass. Bleeding isn’t as efficient in ice-cold water, so wait until a fish is bleed out before putting it in an ice slurry.
Bleeding produces bloodless fillets that taste as clean as the flesh looks.
Can Fish Be Too Fresh? So, can fish be too fresh? In one sense, no. Freshly caught fish, dispatched quickly and cleanly bled, cleaned while in pre-rigor, and eaten shortly thereafter, as in a shorelunch, or immediately at home, is arguably the best fish there is.
By comparison, fish eaten while in rigor may be of lesser quality—less tasty, chewy, and perhaps tough. If fish are stored well at cold temperatures, they usually eat as well and often better a day or two after being caught, when they’re post-rigor. They certainly fry up, broil, or grill better then.
On another front, my take is that fish should be frozen while in pre-rigor or post-rigor, although it’s doubtful that most anglers are discriminating enough to tell at the table, especially if fish are cut up and fried. Existing literature isn’t totally clear on this and it probably varies again based on the fish species and other factors.
Stepping Up Your Game As I said early on, lots of anglers are happy with the way they handle their fish. For me, though, this is part of the life-long journey to do as well as possible, not only catching fish, but having them be exceptional on the table. Many of us are doing better in this regard all the time.
Again, too, circumstances can make it difficult to execute best-handling practices. Guides under pressure to put a limit of fish in the box right now generally aren’t going to be spiking and bleeding fish, especially when the actual harvest target might be as many as 75 fish total for three clients on crappie patrol.
Me? I’d tell the guide that 10’s enough, and let’s be sure to handle those 10 well. And if I was a guide on a fishery with a 25 fish limit, I’d set the limit at 15, and that’s that, making life easier all around and conserving a few fish for another day. (Easy for me to say, right? And that whole discussion can wait for another day.)
Here again, though, there may be benefits for a guide willing to institute best fish-handling practices. Is this not an opportunity for guides to step up their game a notch? And advertise the fact? The captains I’ve worked with on salmon runs on the West Coast immediately kill, bleed, and chill. But then we’re usually talking about dealing with just a few big fish, which indeed end up being exceptional on the table.
For anglers who love to eat fish, there’s no reason to settle for an inferior table product when, with a bit of care, their fish can be some of the most magnificent eating on the face of the earth, beyond the sport, one of the greatest gifts we get from being good anglers. Catch quickly, kill immediately, bleed immediately, chill and keep chilled . Simple as that.
