how is it that you are cooking them, and do you clean out all the guys every time or are you flaying them everytime? I am just cerious, sounds like good eating either way. I have a Russian buddy that takes all the innerds out and soakes them in only salt for a few days then sun drys them for atleast a week or so and they turn out great, Crispy but you can eat them whole with some beer and they are great. He does ALL his pan fish this way. Keep on posting.

I caught a bunch of perch last weekend in 7-10 feet of water on the south east side of the lake in the mouth of the bay. we just used plain ole worms on a hook. This was my last reort not to get skunked.Boated about 20 perch in a couple of hours.

Back when I was fishing Lake Michigan, the perch were 14-15" and they filleted out really nice. Here the perch are significantly smaller and I've been prepping 'em "Silence of the Lambs" style (there's a video on youtube for fastest perch prep), where you sorta skin 'em with the head and guts all in one pull. I might start filleting them though, since I got an electric fillet knife now and eating 'em boneless is kinda nice. Bluegills are new to me, and this year I tried 'em "Silence of the Lambs" style and the rib bones were a real pain (since the bluegill here are small in comparison to the slabs you get down south). So, I started filleting them out and frying them after dipping them in Krusteaz pancake batter - came out very much like a light tempura batter. I've noticed the bluegill meat is a lot less firm than perch meat. Saltwater fish I'm more apt to eat whole, but freshwater fish I tend to try to limit my consumption of PCB's and mercury. I follow the rec's from WDFW and try not to eat the fish whole - so I fillet. I'm sure your Russian buddy's technique is pretty tasty (the sun & salt cure sounds similar to Japanese styles of sun-dried fish), but again I try not to eat the skin, head or belly meat of freshwater fish I catch out of local lakes. After the salt cure, does he fry them?

That's cool - fish are weird, once you find what they like in a particular lake, just stick with it. I suppose you could trap for crawdads with fish guts then you'd never run out of "shrimp"