From the Lake to your Plate
Easy steps on how to properly clean a catfish or bullhead
Two things are usually prevalent when most fishermen encounter a catfish or bullhead while fishing.
One, they appear too ugly to eat, so they let it go.
And number two, catfish and bullhead are believed to be too hard to clean, so they let it go.
False on both counts. Catfish and bullhead are excellent table fare, especially if taken out of clean, fresh bodies of water. Cleaning catfish or bullheads are actually easier to clean than most other fish caught.
Use the following illustrations to teach yourself how to properly clean catfish or bullhead. Once you master it, you’ll be fishing catfish or bullhead more often than you ever thought you would.
Catfish, or better know as bullheads here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, are quite abundant in most all our inland lakes. First time anglers visiting our clear water paradise will undoubtedly catch one or many of these morsels while trying to locate big bluegill, yellow perch or walleye.
Here’s some information to help you during your encounters with them. When the fishing is slow, you can just about bank on having fun catching these tasty morsels.
The Bullhead or Catfish is the most common member of the catfish family. Catfish are named for the long feelers on their faces that look like cat whiskers. Bullheads are brown above and yellow below. They can grow to twenty inches long.
All catfish have sharp barbs on their pectoral fins that inject poison when they jab an enemy. To people, catfish “stings” are no worse than insect bites. Remember, it is their fin barbs that sting, not their whiskers.
All catfish have sharp barbs on their pectoral fins that inject poison when they jab an enemy. To people, catfish “stings” are no worse than insect bites. Remember, it is their fin barbs that sting, not their whiskers.
Bullhead catfish will eat anything from snails to aquatic plants. They rarely come near the surface and, because of their muddy coloring, are hard to detect in the water. But in the spring thousands of spawning bullheads can be seen crowding the shallow of lake-feeding streams. Here the females lay their eggs in a sand nest. The males fertilize the eggs. Both males and females guard the eggs and also the hatched fry. Then the father takes charge and teaches the baby bullheads how to find food and avoid danger.
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