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Mike Schoonveld: How you clean fish impacts the flavor of your fish

The author says he cut the first king salmon he ever caught into steaks. He still does, occasionally, since they taste different than fillets. (Photo by Mike Schoonveld)

I remember the first fish I ever caught that someone cleaned for me and I got to eat it. My grandpa laid the tiny sunfish on the counter, used a spoon to scrape off the scales, chopped off the head and slit the belly open to pull out the entrails.
My dad wasn’t a fisherman and grandpa didn’t live close so I was mostly a self-taught angler. And since that’s how I was taught to clean fish and since the local ponds near my hometown were full of small sunfish, that’s how I cleaned fish I caught for the next dozen years or so.

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