For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for July 30, 2013

After a little fishing trip with some family friends a few years ago, my stepmother didn’t want Dad’s and my catches in the kitchen.

The American Indians taught the Pilgrims to bury fish with the corn they planted – it provided fertilizer for the growing corn. I guess that’s what Grandpa will be doing.

My grandmother would always say that whenever we went fishing, she hated cleaning fish because of the paring knife

I can remember my grandfather gutting the salmon he caught, but my grandmother would scale it. She never allowed me anywhere near the scaling knife, but I used to love to watch her and see all the scales flying all over the place. Those were big fish, too. I have a photo of me at about age ten holding up two salmon that were almost as long as I was tall.

As a kid summering on the Jersey shore (USA, not GB), the catch was always cleaned and scaled in the back yard. Kids did the scaling (with scalers, not sharp knives) and adults gutted and trimmed. Cutoff heads and tails were often wrapped tightly in newspaper and refrigerated for later use as bait for crabbing; ’50’s refrigerators didn’t have much to offer for freezing anything but ice cubes. The rest went into the “garbage” pail. Free pig chow for the local hog farmers. Remember when bacon was REALLY tasty? How many of today’s kids would know what to do with a fresh-caught fish?

I didn’t fish as a kid, but my wife grew up with the rule, “You catch it, you clean it.” Makes sense to me.

I remember years ago seeing a comic (probably in the Saturday Evening Post): two Eskimos on the beach with a whale. She said “You caught it—YOU clean it!”

I catch it, I clean it, I cook it, I eat it – while you are out catching your own supper.

my dad used to clean fish on the picnic table in the backyard, and there would be scales left that dried on and never came off. On bigger fishing trips, they had someone they paid to clean the fish and wrap it for freezing….

If you clean it in the boat, the spot you dump the leavings could be a great fishing spot. Use it for chum.

Cleaning fish is such an easy job. Years ago I worked in a local abattoir and have also cleaned; pigs, sheep, goats, cows, and even a few bison.

It is really not hard to clean fish. One slit down the middle and then scoop out the insides. You are done.

Justification for “catch and release.” Why waste ’em?

After reading some of these comments, I formed a mental picture of a piece of wood shaped like a narrow paddle with a handle; on one side of the paddle, someone had nailed or stapled two rows of pop-bottle caps. Anyone ever use a home-made fish scaler that looked like this?

smells fishy to me

Waste not want not, get busy lazy old man.

Our house was the “you catch ’um, you clean ’um” t ype. I LOVED fishing. Could bait my hook (with worms), remove hooks from fish, clean all my fish and cook them over a campfire by the age of eight. Not too bad for a girl in the 1960s. :o)

I’m with you, Susan. As much fun as I had watching Grandma scale them and the one time I went bullhead fishing with Grandpa, I absolutely loathe fish, including most shellfish.

I remember catching bluegills that were too small to eat, but we were told to release them, not bury them. It’s nice to see a thread where everyone is sharing stories & getting along!

If he knew he had to clean them himself, he should have thrown them back before they died.

My Dad always cleaned his own fish. That’s the test of a real man.

The first time i heard that line when my stepmother greeted me at the door, when i carried in a bagful of quail. This is why you see corpses lying in the field: fun to shoot, period.

m m mm – sounds good. And throw in some proper-made coleslaw..