Good knife to gut?

[Foster]

This might seem like the idiots question of the day but I figured out I have a problem. Last weekend I caught two channel cats, wimpy 10 and 12 inchers but it took a good 45+ minutes of hacking, sawing, you name it to get the heads off and I know they don't have that big of bones.

I ended up using the end of the knife straight down about 3-4 times on each of them and then using a steak knife to slice the belly. They were completely worth it being my first cat catches and first experience eating it but I'm thinking ahead now for when I catch my monster fish.

Any brand/type/style of knife work better than something else? Keeping in mind that I'm not rich and $50 is about my limit currently.

 

[JasonsPlecosCichlids]

I use a fillet knife with half the blade serrated. Not sure why you need to cut the head of but what I do is fillet it, that’s it. I make a cut right behind the gill plate which this area towards the top is very thick, then cut down to the bone, then start working my way down the cat along the spine with the blade tilted up just a bit so I don’t dig into the bone; takes about 3 minutes or so to fillet a nice cat if you are fast with a knife.

No beheading, no gutting required.

 

[likestofish]

Theres no need to hack their heads off. First you hang them up and cut off their tails to bleed them. Then cut only through the skin down the back and belly to the tail. gt some skinning pliers pull off the skin and then fillet.

 

[JasonsPlecosCichlids]

Theres no need to hack their heads off. First you hang them up and cut off their tails to bleed them. Then cut only through the skin down the back and belly to the tail. gt some skinning pliers pull off the skin and then fillet.

Heck you dont even need to do that. The slabs of catfish wont have hardly, if any blood in them.

 

[zpetrichko]

My dad gave me an old timer knife with a gut hook on it that i've used for rabbits and wood chuck and fish. you make a small incision and then turn it around and use the gut hook its small and easily thrown in a tackle box.

 

[Foster]

Fair enough, I wasn't expecting the catch and never learned any different so I just did as I would with a trout.

 

[likestofish]

Heck you dont even need to do that. The slabs of catfish wont have hardly, if any blood in them.

Shoot if you dont bleed them the rib meet tends to have a lot of blood

 

[JasonsPlecosCichlids]

Shoot if you dont bleed them the rib meet tends to have a lot of blood

For catfish?

 

[likestofish]

For catfish?

Yeah had problems with that last summer. Didnt bleed a 7 pounder and that whole area was reddish

 

[JasonsPlecosCichlids]

Yeah had problems with that last summer. Didnt bleed a 7 pounder and that whole area was reddish

Hmmm.. Ive never run into that before. Do you actually eat the meat off the ribs or what? When I clean a cat, the slab of meat over the ribs are usually thin but I get as close as I can to the cage.