# How do you keep your fish fresh?



## skinny_fishing (Aug 30, 2021)

Interested in how everyone keeps their dinner fresh, looks like there's a lot of different ways....Live well? On ice? Cubed, crushed or shaved ice? Saltwater ice? To bleed or not to bleed? Stab the brain? Do you clean them on site or wait until you get to the docks or home?

I've read that you're supposed to bleed fish and/or stab the brain for taste reasons but hardly ever see it done, is that a myth?

Also is ice a must, or is it suitable to use ice packs as long as the cooler is nice and cold?

I plan on doing lots of snapper fishing soon so I want to make sure I'm going about it the best possible way to keep the meat as fresh and tasty as possible.


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## DBStoots (Jul 9, 2011)

I don't keep a lot of fish, but this is interesting. If I was an offshore guy, I would definitely use this.

Iki Jime


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## devrep (Feb 22, 2009)




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## skinny_fishing (Aug 30, 2021)

^^^^ is that a cooler bag?

I've also seen the method of putting a wire down the spinal colum, pretty sure that's part of ike jime as well.

But all the fishing videos I watch they just toss the fish right into the cooler


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## Redtail (May 25, 2021)

Cleaning your catch at sea is not allowed in Florida, so you might want to check your state's regulations before you try this. Ice layered over fish or an ice slurry is the best way to properly chill fresh fish. Never stabbed them in the brain but regularly cut the gills to bled them. Ice packs are better than nothing but will not chill fish to a cold enough temperature.


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## NealXB2003 (Jun 8, 2020)

Ive got a 120 qt roto molded cooler I take along when I'm going to keep fish for dinner. If it's not hot enough outside to melt a little ice pretty quick, I'll add a little water. I want the fish in ice water, not on top of an ice block. 

I have tried bleeding the fish and could not taste a difference. Just makes for a more clean- up.
Never heard of stabbing the brain. I always bleed them by punching a hole behind the gills. Can do it with your thumb on most fish. But again, your cooler is going to be a nasty mess. 

I always clean them at the dock. I have a feeling the game warden is going to be suspicious if you arrive back at the dock with a bag of fillets. 

Then I vacuum seal them almost immediately after cleaning and rinsing.


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## TylertheTrout2 (Apr 21, 2016)

You can gut your fish out at sea but definitely cant fillet and release.

For us its just bleed them and bury them in ice. Bleeding does get you a lighter color fillet with most fish in my opinion but I don't have any real data to prove that's factual... just observation and taste quality seems a little better.

Once a few fish make it to the ice I like to add some sea water to the ice and make a brine. Gets the fish super cold and makes filleting easier, for me at least.


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## Spottedtails (Feb 15, 2021)

Everything ive seen says bleeding only helps taste if youre going to wait a couple days to eat the filet. We typically eat the fish that night so i dont bother with it.

Lots of ice or a water/ice mix. Fish immediately goes into the cooler when it hits the deck. Repack to add a layer of ice between each fish when were switching spots or running back in. Clean when we get to the dock. One thing i see a lot of people do that im not a fan of is let the filets sit out in the sun while cleaning. We usually have one person rinsing filets and bagging while others clean the fish. This is how we do it for offshore. For the occasional redfish just make sure hes iced down good.


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## dbrady784 (Feb 17, 2014)

I see it popular on most jetty’s or around bridges to put various snapper and other species directly into a bucket until said day of fishing is done. Ice seems to be not required, or optional maybe? Wonder if that pre baking in the sun helps add to the flavor? This can be observed on most weekends, so maybe just maybe they are on to something.


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## topnative2 (Feb 22, 2009)

The commercial guys use a slurry of ice/water and kosher salt.......gets them extra cold......gut them first
It is really important w/ oily fish....macks ,blues etc


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## karstopo (Nov 28, 2019)

I often string my redfish I’m retaining and they are still very much alive by the time I get back home. The fish stay on the stringer and that gets put into the water off the dock first thing when I get home, then I hose down my gear and put that away. The fish are back to calm and relaxed by the time I get to them for cleaning. We eat more redfish than any other fish. Otherwise, fish go on ice in the cooler. A half day trip is a long one these days so the fish never spend much more than two or three of hours on ice or a stringer before being cleaned. Fish generally gets eaten in a day or two or gets frozen.


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## SS06 (Apr 6, 2021)

Snapper is a species I catch and eat a lot of, most other inshore are released... throw snapper on ice and clean em at the dock. 
Offshore species for the table get buried in ice and cleaned at the dock also


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## FlatsMafia (Feb 1, 2021)

Ice, ice and more ice 🧊


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## skinny_fishing (Aug 30, 2021)

karstopo said:


> I often string my redfish I’m retaining and they are still very much alive by the time I get back home. The fish stay on the stringer and that gets put into the water off the dock first thing when I get home, then I hose down my gear and put that away. The fish are back to calm and relaxed by the time I get to them for cleaning. We eat more redfish than any other fish. Otherwise, fish go on ice in the cooler. A half day trip is a long one these days so the fish never spend much more than two or three of hours on ice or a stringer before being cleaned. Fish generally gets eaten in a day or two or gets frozen.


Haven't you ever had a problem with sharks tho? Too many sharks around here (St.Pete) and no way i'd use a stringer in the Keys for that reason.


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## sydngoose (Oct 1, 2017)

We use ice and salt water to make a permafreeze: I use the yeti bag coolers inshore: I can get a two man limit in there with 10 pounds of ice and slush water: fresh fish every time.


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## karstopo (Nov 28, 2019)

skinny_fishing said:


> Haven't you ever had a problem with sharks tho? Too many sharks around here (St.Pete) and no way i'd use a stringer in the Keys for that reason.


Not in most of the back marshes, creeks and little bayous I tend to fish. Even the tertiary bays here aren’t a problem with the sharks. The big bays, like Matagorda or Galveston Bay, absolutely, the surf and river mouths that hit the GOM, for sure, no way do I string fish there. If I wade the surf here and decide to retain any fish, I walk up each and everyone to the ice chest. Beaches are mostly drive on beaches here so the truck is always close by. The surf is full of sharks here, I’ve caught them on lures and flies without even wanting to. One of the biggest sharks if not the biggest shark I ever saw up close while wade fishing was in a max 2’ deep 10 acre lake right off West Matagorda bay. Shark was 7’ long. I know in the surf they get even bigger. In the mouth of the Brazos River, there’s a shallow bar out offshore just a bit and when it is calm enough, that bar is infested with sharks, they are easy enough to see and there are a multitude.

Anyone that strings fish in the surf or bigger bays here is asking for trouble. Most that do on a regular basis have unpleasant shark encounter stories. Fishing in the mouth of the Brazos or San Bernard rivers, expect losing part of your catch to sharks just reeling in fish, the same can be true in the bigger bays and offshore.

But, the way back mud holes I haunt, the sharks don’t seem to make it up that far. Redfish do. I think the redfish come up in there sometimes to avoid the sharks and dolphins. Too much oyster reef and too shallow for the top of the chain predators, except for me.


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## jay.bush1434 (Dec 27, 2014)

When I go on a grocery run, here's my process:

land the fish and knock it on the head
cut the throat latch and pull out the gills and guts. On smaller fish, typical of what I catch on the flats, I can do this with my finger and pull the gills and guts out
bend the head back to break the spinal cord
fish goes into livewell to finish bleeding out or into the cooler. Incidentally, I keep a contractor grade thickness trash bag on my boat and will put the fish in the bag instead of directly in the cooler. That way my cooler isn't slimy and fishy smelling.
I've cleaned fish that I've bled and gutted and fish that were just tossed in cooler and I can easily see a difference in color of the fillets. The ones that were bled out were lighter colored. For fish that can have a stronger taste, like redfish, it really helps minimize some of that "fishy" flavor.
I started gutting and gilling fish when I fished offshore years ago. We always did it with tuna and I started doing with all the offshore fish we caught. I figured if it helped with offshore fish, it would help with inshore fish as well and it does. After I've cleaned and rinsed the fillets, I'll pat them dry, add a few sprinkles of salt and vacu-seal. The salt helps restore the pH balance of the fillet from the freshwater rinse. Essentially, every fish I decide to keep is handled like it will be served as sashimi. This youtube video explains both the ike jime method and why bleeding and paralyzing the fish help with keeping your catch tasting as fresh as possible: Ike Jime.
FYI: Ive tried the ike jime method a few times. It takes a fair bit of practice to get the wire down the spinal cord column and I just gave up.


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## Copahee Hound (Dec 21, 2017)

Thanks for the vid @jay.bush1434 

We've been bleeding the fish that we keep for years, but I didn't realize we should be doing more steps. I'm not going to be carrying a "nerve rod" either. You really can tell a difference in color of the fillets, but I've personally not noticed any better taste in inshore fish. I do, however, douse my cooked fillets with lemon so that probably masks any added flavor benefits


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## War Bird (Jul 6, 2020)

Bleed them and put them in an inshore fish bag full of ice. You can see the difference in snook fillets in the blood line when you bleed them


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## Slacker (Oct 7, 2016)

I’ve been doing ike jime “light” for several years—I spike the kind brain and bleed from both collar and tail. I also gut and gill so that I can pack the fish with ice. The cooler looks like a crime scene, but fillets keep for 5-7 days (on ice in fridge) without loss of quality. I haven’t found it worth the effort to run the wire down the spine on inshore fish.


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## jbyrum (Jan 12, 2015)

We've started bleeding nearly everything in the past year or so. Small fish typically go in a chill kill bucket with ice and seawater. Larger fish get bled, then packed in ice. We even gutted some yellowfins last spring to help cool them down more quickly and conserve ice. Bleeding seems to make a huge difference - seabass fillets are snow white, beeliners fillets are much more firm, and even speckled trout are much firmer.


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## skinny_fishing (Aug 30, 2021)

Wow lots of different opinions, I guess it mostly comes down to inshore or offshore and if you're gonna eat the fish the same day or not. If I plan on eating some inshore Mangrove Snapper the same day I guess just tossing them in ice will be ok. I'll try bleeding too, but I'd rather not make more of a mess in the cooler if I don't have to.


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## Goose (Jul 15, 2019)

I instantly throw the fish into the cooler with an ice saltwater slurry. Not sure if that’s the best method but I have noticed the fish don't flop around near as much in the cooler this way.


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## Jason M (Aug 13, 2017)

jay.bush1434 said:


> When I go on a grocery run, here's my process:
> 
> land the fish and knock it on the head
> cut the throat latch and pull out the gills and guts. On smaller fish, typical of what I catch on the flats, I can do this with my finger and pull the gills and guts out
> ...


What Jay says is what I've heard from experienced captains the eat a lot of fish.

Bleeding is really important. It's easy and certainly doesn't hurt the flavor. A captain I know who eats more fish than meat told me to cut the throat or punch the spot behind the pec fin on tuna and bleed them out in a bucket then into the cooler. I like the idea of the contractor bag is a good idea if you don't have a dedicated fish box.

It doesn't matter if they are inshore or offshore. I would want to handle them the same way.


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## Steve_Mevers (Feb 8, 2013)

Cast netters used to use spanish cast nets that did not have any handline or brials in the nets so when you casted the net over mullet, you would grab the mullet in the net and push an ice pic into their brain to kill them. The best way to keep fish is to toss them into a saltwater ice slush to get them chilled as fast as possible.


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## birdyshooter (Sep 17, 2019)

I’m a throw them in the cooler and eat the same day kinda guy. My guy in the office swears by freezing the fillets in a zip lock with saltwater covering them. He thawed out some flounder from months ago and said it was as fresh as the day they caught it.


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## finbully (Jan 26, 2013)

I release them back to where I got them.


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## TravHale (May 17, 2019)

Trout, reds, flounder, etc. that I plan to eat within a day or two, I will generally not do much more than cover with ice in the cooler--I find just getting them cold quickly is sufficient. If I know i'll be freezing to eat at a later date, I will bleed/gill/gut when caught, then pack them with ice in the cooler. Getting as much blood out of the flesh as you can will help prevent fishy taste/smell as it ages.


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## Ajax1980 (10 mo ago)

skinny_fishing said:


> Interested in how everyone keeps their dinner fresh, looks like there's a lot of different ways....Live well? On ice? Cubed, crushed or shaved ice? Saltwater ice? To bleed or not to bleed? Stab the brain? Do you clean them on site or wait until you get to the docks or home?
> 
> I've read that you're supposed to bleed fish and/or stab the brain for taste reasons but hardly ever see it done, is that a myth?
> 
> ...


Bleed'em, then put them on in icey water for a couple hours, the filet them up and freeze if needed.


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## SS06 (Apr 6, 2021)

finbully said:


> I release them back to where I got them.


That's all good but not the subject at hand...if you have nothing to add how bout not post at all. Nothing wrong with a licensed fisherman keeping a limit to eat...


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## finbully (Jan 26, 2013)

SS06 said:


> That's all good but not the subject at hand...if you have nothing to add how bout not post at all. Nothing wrong with a licensed fisherman keeping a limit to eat...


How about using the ignore feature for folks you don't want to hear from? Otherwise, suck it up.


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## POCtied (Oct 19, 2016)

Bleed them out in the live well, then on ice/saltwater bath. Though we rarely keep anything these days, maybe a 20” red or a few trout for ceviche dinner that night, we never ever store fish, unless it’s a flounder, I’ve been known to keep a couple of those as my wife likes them.

I used to tie my stringer to my belt when I started wade fishing again after moving back to TX, that was a scary lesson. Make that an easy breakaway, even a small shark pulls harder than I’m comfortable with.


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## Smackdaddy53 (Dec 31, 2012)

SS06 said:


> That's all good but not the subject at hand...if you have nothing to add how bout not post at all. Nothing wrong with a licensed fisherman keeping a limit to eat...


Simmer down, you are acting like me!!!


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## tailchaser16 (Sep 23, 2008)

For all day trips I throw my fish in a contractor bag with one bag of ice and then in my soft side cooler. For night trips 3-4 hours, fish go in live well. Both times, fish get cleaned at ramp.

My opinios and what I know…
If you are filleting the fish you can just remove the blood line when cleaning no need to bleed.
If you are eating it whole, then yes bleed it.

I heard or read that fish that are kept alive in a live well or stringer and then cleaned are stressed and this affects the taste. I am not so sure about that and have not noticed a difference in taste.

Lots of iceing toughens up the fish and makes it easier to clean. 

I never rinse my fillets after cleaning only before cooking.

If you are going to freeze, freeze fillets in water from the tap. Make sure fillets are completely covered. Thaw 2-3 days before cooking in refrigerator and draining water. They will taste fresh months after.

All fish should only stay in refrigerator maximum of 3-4 days.

Bon Appetite


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## TravHale (May 17, 2019)

tailchaser16 said:


> For all day trips I throw my fish in a contractor bag with one bag of ice and then in my soft side cooler. For night trips 3-4 hours, fish go in live well. Both times, fish get cleaned at ramp.
> 
> My opinios and what I know…
> If you are filleting the fish you can just remove the blood line when cleaning no need to bleed.
> ...


I'd add that if storing in the fridge.. Dry fillets with paper towel, place fillets in Ziploc bag, remove air, submerge in an ice bath (bowl of ice water), and place bowl in refrigerator --Replace ice as it melts.. I've kept fresh fish up to a week this way.


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## Marshdweller08 (Aug 1, 2018)

Release


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## Copahee Hound (Dec 21, 2017)

POCtied said:


> trout for ceviche dinner that night


Very interested in your trout ceviche... Care to share?


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## jonterr (Mar 24, 2013)

karstopo said:


> I often string my redfish I’m retaining and they are still very much alive by the time I get back home. The fish stay on the stringer and that gets put into the water off the dock first thing when I get home, then I hose down my gear and put that away. The fish are back to calm and relaxed by the time I get to them for cleaning. We eat more redfish than any other fish. Otherwise, fish go on ice in the cooler. A half day trip is a long one these days so the fish never spend much more than two or three of hours on ice or a stringer before being cleaned. Fish generally gets eaten in a day or two or gets frozen.


I’m trying to figure out how a fish at the dock with a stringer in his mouth gets back to calm and relaxed?😳


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## TX_maverick (Oct 26, 2020)

I mostly keep reds these days. If I am in my skiff and not wading, I will put them on a stringer, cut into the gills, and get the blood flowing then toss them back into the water and let them swim the blood out. Once they bleed out a while, into the cooler buried in ice.


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## SS06 (Apr 6, 2021)

jonterr said:


> I’m trying to figure out how a fish at the dock with a stringer in his mouth gets back to calm and relaxed?😳


If you have never seen/experienced it I can understand your statement...but a fish on a stringer actually is a pretty calm fish. They don't fight or pull against it often just swim along as your wading/moving.


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## SS06 (Apr 6, 2021)

Marshdweller08 said:


> Release


Nothing wrong with keeping a few fish...leave it alone man


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## RennieRae (Aug 4, 2018)

Copahee Hound said:


> Very interested in your trout ceviche... Care to share?


I'm interested also! Ceviche recipes have so many variations that I love to hear who likes what included in theirs. I have not used trout before but can see how it would work well. I prefer snapper, pompano, scallops or shrimp.


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## Marshdweller08 (Aug 1, 2018)

SS06 said:


> Nothing wrong with keeping a few fish...leave it alone man


Being a smart ass of course.....I keep a few on occasion if I plan on eating them that night.


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