Summer Catch Up Post

[2knots]

Wanted to ask you about bleeding your salmon.  First off, how do you "bleed" them?  Second, do you do that on Kokanee?  Others?  I go to Fort Peck in Montana and catch Kings, see pic, never bled them, but really have not been fond of the taste.  Maybe bleeding them would help?

Yes I bleed Kokanee and the other salmon ( pretty much all fish I keep) for salmon and trout I use a knife and insert about at the back of the gill plate in front of the collar just under halfway up from the bottom. If you pull up the gill plate you can see a “purple” or dark area behind the gills and this is what I pierce with the knife. According to the guide that showed me this there is a major vein or artery there and this let the blood flow out, he would also use his hand and run it from the tail to the head putting pressure on the spine and would push more blood out after they had stopped bleeding, I don’t do that as they seem to bleed out very well from the cut. The red X i put on the picture in your post is the area I insert the knife and trying to exit in the same area on opposite side ( you don’t really need to exit far side just a reference for the angle)




On fish other then trout and salmon I also cut the gills as they don’t seem to have that vein area in the same area