Ribs out and skin on you take your knife held vertically starting at the tail,.

Cleaning pike y bone. Just above the dotted line, cut straight down and along the line just until the tip of the knife blade begins to click on the stems. The short arm of the y bones may be visible as little white dots, and you can feel their tips by running your finger along. These bones run down to the skin and.

You will see a row of bones running down the middle of the fish. With the pike still on its. To find the y bones in a northern pike.

As you can see, they are easy to identify and work around. Some waste is evident along the y bones, but is a minimal amount. ← previous the best way to fillet.

Once found, run the tip of a very sharp knife down the center line. Keeping pike alive and dispatching with a “billy” just before cleaning results in a better product. Pike have a set of y bones that causes anglers to avoid cleaning and cooking them.

Place the northern filet skin down. How to clean a pike step. The y bones are positioned along the back of the fish as shown above.

4 ways to locate northern pike. It is true that there is a trick to cleaning northern pike to properly remove the “y” bones, but once you learn how, it is easy and well worth the effort. Hopefully you can put it to use to make your pike y bone removal process a little bit less daunting: