Wild Caught, Wild Kids

Published: Wednesday, May 19, 2021
By: Savannah Hess

My husband and I have a habit of letting our kids fail at things. Usually, this means standing by watching, in my case a tad anxiously, while they do something exceptionally… questionable. So far, this has resulted in a few scraped knees, a terrible haircut, a really good shiner, untold messes—and two confident kids ready to handle the next challenge. As a nice reward, it also means that when a parent does step in for safety reasons, both kids are naturally inclined to listen.

So, it’s for these reasons that one Saturday afternoon I handed my four- and six-year-olds each a knife and a dead bluegill and invited them to help make dinner. The sunfish in line for a cleaning were caught more than six months before during a few father and son fishing trips. They had found a bountiful fall fishing spot and even brought home nearly 30 bluegill in a single day. Not all were large, but each had delighted Alex, the four-year-old, granting him triumph over countless unsuccessful casts. By the end of the day, he had been exhausted and cranky. Yet, even as his eyes fought to stay open, he kept asking, “When can we go again?”

Now, six months older and a couple of inches taller already, Alex held his knife in reverence and squealed, “Is this real? I’ve never got to use a real knife before!”

Kira’s focus was on her fish, already gutted and beheaded. She held it in matching reverence but spoke little as she examined the bones, visible from underneath. “Is that its spine?” she asked, pointing. “And those are its ribs?” And although bluegill are bony fish, we talked about how others have skeletons made out of cartilage. This turned into giggling suggestions of ears and noses swimming through our local waters, which then devolved into discussions of boogers... and then somehow Godzilla? I struggled to get attention back to the task at hand.

With a cutting board for each of us, I demonstrated how to descale a bluegill:

Begin by positioning the fish on its side, head away from you.
Starting at the tail, angle the knife (or a soup spoon) so it’ll catch under the scales.
With firm but gentle pressure against the skin of the fish, move the blade away from you.

And that’s all it took for scales to go everywhere. Some people have fancy tools to contain the scales (they’re less than $10 on Amazon) while others use spoons to deflect the scales away from flying a zillion miles an hour into your face—but, honestly, where’s the fun in that?

As if the burst of scales had been the smoke from a starter gun, Alex took to his fish with a fervor one might expect at a high-stakes lumberjack competition. I made a noise I never used to make before having kids and he must’ve known what it meant because he stopped and looked at me. I helped him hold his knife hand at a proper angle and then moved it—slowly—so he could get a feel for the motion. He moved more deliberately after that, even learning to use the tip of the knife to remove the hard-to-reach smaller scales along the fish’s dorsal fin, and he didn’t stop working until there was no more to do.

Kira shot her fishes across the yard a few times and got herself a time or two with the spines, but she also took to descaling so well that I had to resign myself to assistant/fillet master instead.

Once done, 1.7lbs of fish was baked and pan-fried in a variety of ways for a family taste test. (Lightly breaded with a parmesan crust won out.) We were all due for a shower, there were scales sparkling on the floor down the hall, the dishwasher was full, and there were extra clothes waiting for the wash.

We could’ve gone to the grocery store and bought plenty of fish that took a fraction of time to prepare and made far less of a mess, but Alex had worked hard to bring these fish home and he didn’t let us forget it. He and Kira had both labored to prepare our meal and here they enjoyed the fruits of that labor. No one had lost any fingers and all I could see were the smiles at the table and the growing pride in their hearts.

About the Author

Savannah Hess has worked for Great Lakes Scuttlebutt in a variety of job positions for more than 14 years. Her passion for the great outdoors includes fishing, boating, hiking, camping, hunting, and backpacking—while including her young children in most everything. Follow her adventures at www.literallyoutdoors.com.

A version of this article appeared in the Launch Issue (May/June) 2021 of Great Lakes Scuttlebutt magazine.

tags: Fishing, Kids & Pets, Lifestyle