My husband just took me on my first fishing trip and I'm hooked!! I caught a beautiful coho salmon...now I'd like to clean it and prepare it for storage BUT what is the proper way to clean and gut a salmon? Help is greatly appreciated!

Good for you! Well the best way I have found is to filet it. Cut behind the gilplate from top to bottom but not cutting past halfway through the fish(depth wize). Run your knife down one side of the back(length wize). At first just till you feel the ribcage. Follow the ribcage back untill you can cut through the bottom of the fish. Continue till you reach just before the tail. Now go back to where you cut behind the gilplate. lift the meat so that you can see the ribcage. run your knife tight to the ribs and carefully cut until you can go through the bottom of the fish. Cut through the fish until you have reached the tail and at that point cut the filet off. Turn the fish over and do the same to the other side. This side is allways alil harder to do. If every thing goes right, there should be nothing but a skelleton left on the fish. You can then freeze the filets as is or cut them into steaks on then freeze. Well good luck, dont plan on a perfect filet the first couple of times. It takes practice just like everthing else..

Heres a link to Bobs tip on filleting. http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/tips/fillet.htm

This is too late for your first fish, but on all the next ones the first thing you should do after bonking it is make a cut just behind the gills inside the gill plate. This will bleed the fish. As soon as possible you should gut the fish. If you want to leave the head on, just cut the gills out, if you don't want the head on you can cut the head of with the gills in it. The next step is to cut from the vent(A-hole) up the middle of the belly to between the pectoral(front) fins. Now open the belly up and find where the guts attach just behind where the gills were attached. Cut down each side to release the whole gut pile and pull it back and out toward the vent. Now all that should be left is the kidney which lays along the spine. Just cut from the head to vent along the inside of the spine and scoop the kidney out with a spoon. A good fish knife will have a blade on one end and a spoon on the other end for removing the kidney. Thoroughly wash out the kidney and blood as they have enzymes that hasten the process of spoiling. It is most important to bleed the fish and remove the gills ASAP becuase they both are full of bacteria that will soon start to spoil the fish. Now that the fish is bleed and gutted you can ice it and do your further processing such as fillet , steak or whatever later. Have bloody fun.

[This message has been edited by Keta (edited 10-23-2000).]