How do you clean fish on your boat and keep the mess down? I like to gut my fish on the water soon after they are caught. I have seen the plastic "coho cleaners" at a few of the tackle shops and they look like they would work, but they are also $25.00, and being the cheap guy that I am, I want to know how you clean fish on your boat without making a huge mess! :p

I use a coho cleaner on the campion/I use the diamond plate hatch cover with a floor mat over it in my sled,I use the gravel bar when in my drift boat.Good luck,
STRIKE ZONE

If it's done right, the only messy part is removing the blood line.

Those coho cleaners work great! I had one on my old boat and loved it. The $25 is not bad as they are well made and last a long time. The Almar we fish on in Sitka has an aluminum fish cleaner built right into the side rail and it works well too.

When it's tired out, and in the net bonk it between the eyes ONCE good. Stick a small rope/stringer (which is attached to a cleat or whatever) through its's mouth and out the
gill(s) cut gills with scissors or knife and/or cut throat area to bleed. Put boat in gear and drag it for a minute while re-rigging or setting your crap back to the depth you dangled.

You can drag it in the net or if your rope/stringer is attached to a cleat drag it there.
When satisfied that it is bled well, lift by rope/stringer and slice the belly either anal vent forward or commercial style (Just slit the belly open and yank out what you can easily grab ). I like anal vent forward method then I can easily scrape the blood out along the spine. Voila! Straight to ice/cooler.
No mess, except a little on the exterior water line, no biggy.
Keeps more scales on it (prettier for photos and when showing the wife why I 'waste' all my time and $$ fishing!) it also doesn't flop on floor spewing blood everywhere.

I used to do it all in the motor-well but that got messy and I didn't like the idea of oil and gas residue on my fish.

A million ways to skin a cat, or a salmon....

After bleeding on a rope as above I Gut and clean 'em in a 5 gallon Bucket. Then into the ice! Don't throw your knife over with the GutZ.

Hey guys,

I had a fish bio tell me that leaving the fish on rope in the water after its dead is the worse thing you can possibly due as it will only accelerate the growth of micro-organisms. The best thing to do is keep the fish in a dark, moist enviroment such as a gunnie sack or in the fish box out of sunlight. Might be a bunch of BS but it does make sense.

DOGOFF!

Whether it accelerates growth of bacteria and the like or not has never made any difference to me. I leave fish on a stringer in the water of the Cowlitz all the time. Never had any problems, the water is so cold that any bacterial growth would be minimal anyway. I think those biologists think they know more than most people without having the practical experience of the veteran outdoorsmen.

When I was a kid my dad made an excellent fish cleaning tray that lasted for years out of plywood. Varnished it up nice and then attached a manual brass bilge pump to the side - the intake hose dangled in the water and you had a great washdown system to rinse the fish off/out after cleaning. Economy model would substitute a small bucket for the hand pump.

Of course I'm lazier and have less time than my dad so I've got the coho cleaner which I've hung over the rail and mounted by drilling through the edge of the tray and through the rail and then using 3 stainless bolts/wingnuts for a sturdier mounting than the supplied ropes gives you. Then of course a high-pressure washdown hose takes care of those duties.

Bonk the fish, into the tray, cut the gills, gear back down while the fish bleeds, immediately clean the fish and bury in crushed ice. We spend a ton of money on catching the fish - why not get the best possible seafood home out of the deal.

My pre-divorce boat I had a custom tray welded up out of aluminum that was quite large (always the optamist) and I had a nylon filet table lid that hinged open or shut. Did all the bottomfish fileting right out on the water with the added advantage of closing the lid kept a reviving fish from flopping out of the tray. Actually lost a salmon that way once.

Fish on - here's to needing that tail notch in the end of the fish-cleaning tray!

AMEN BROTHER AMEN!

I would echo those same sentiments for getting as much meat off of the carcass as humanly possible.