How To Remove Bones From Northern Pike

Team JustNorth posted on December 20, 2008 11:22 :: 5442 Views

OK, here’s the deal. It seems that ninety percent of all anglers in Minnesota chase the almighty Walleye. Great. They’re nothing more than a spiny sucker. Just another bottom feeder. They have absolutely no flavor of their own, and they taste exactly like whatever you cooked them in. Don’t get me wrong. I have no objections to keeping one in the bag every now and then, but there are a lot better eating fish out there. Bluegills are number one on my list. Number two is a Northern Pike.

Yep, I love eatin’ those slimers. I’ve always been told that pike are “fishy tasting.” That’s because they are a fish. It’s the strong gamey smell that gets folks. Another thing I hear is, “ I don’t like eating around all those bones.” You’re right, there’s a ton of bones in those little pickler northerns. I believe that a lot of the strong flavor is contained in those bones. So if you get rid of the bones, it’s a twofold benefit. Here’s how I make a pike into excellent table fare by peeling the bones out. There’s probably a dozen ways to do it. This is how I learned to do it, and it works for me.

If you find a better way, that’s great. This is just the way I learned.

Step 1: Presuming you have already caught a pike, is to fillet it, as you normally would do. The “Y” part of the bone is toward you, and runs down and away toward what would be the top of the fish.

Remove Pike Bones - Step 1

Step 2: Feel the top part of the “Y” bone. It’s the prickly part of the fillet you can feel if you run your fingers along the fillet above the midline. Remember the bones do not extend all the way into the tail area. Cut above the prickles, in a DOWN AND AWAY motion. You are slicing away from you, using the “Y” bones for a guide. This gives you the piece I call the “fish stick.”

Remove Pike Bones Step 2

Step 3: With the fish stick separated (notice how it is still attached to the tail portion: by MN law you cannot transport a fish that has been reduced to more than 2 fillets) you can now work on removing the bones from the fillet. Start by making a slice straight down toward the cutting board, right along the midline of the fish. The midline is a line you can see that will be just a little below the prickles. Don’t make this slice too deep. You just want to get under the actual “Y” of the “Y” bone. Now turn the knife toward the top of the fish and feel the bones above your knife. Again, use the bones for the guide, and slice AWAY from you. With the bones on top, you can almost cut with the knife parallel to the cutting board.

Remove Pike Bones Step 3

When you do this right, the meat that is still attached to the bone is so thin, you can almost see through it. I had the privilege of helping at a sportsman’s club fish fry, where everyone brought fish in. I had a guy show me this on one fish, then he handed me the knife. I did about 15-18 fish that night that the guys brought in, and I promise you, when I got done, most of those fish didn’t look like they came nicely packaged on a grocery store shelf. Some of them looked like I removed the bones with a hammer. It takes a little time to learn this technique, but once you figure it out, it is well worth the time it takes to do it.

Remove Pike Bones Step 3B

Notice in the photos, that the fillet is still in one piece. As I mentioned earlier, for transportation, you can only make two fillets out of one fish. Making four, five or more pieces may get you in trouble with wildlife transportation laws. Also, for transportation, don’t forget to leave the patch of skin on the side, so the species is easily identifiable.

I try not to worry about transportation laws too much. I bring the fish back home, or to the cabin, or tent, in one piece. I clean them, cook them and eat them there, and I never let them be frozen. After pike have been de-boned, I’ve had folks tell me that some of the best fish they’ve ever eaten. Some of those folks were die-hard walleye fanatics.

Once you learn how easy it is to de-bone a Northern Pike, and how much easier they are to eat, and how much true flavor a pike has, you’ll wonder why you’ve been throwing all those snakes back, while you’ve been out chasing spiny bottom feeders.

Take a Kid Pike Fishing