Freezing fish whole = Bad ?

So someone posted this in this ultra light group I'm in saying they where getting ready for a fish fry

I saw it and was like " near" but checked the comments and saw probably 80% of them being people kinda freaking out because they where frozen whole un processed. No one seemed be be able to explain why it's such a bad thing but they where sure talking about how he needed a fillet knife talk of wasted potential ect. Guy explained that hay he's just gonna thaw them out scale and gut them then cook them again again folks we're loosing it. I have to say I'm pretty confused here. Your not wasting more cooking whole vs filleting, their frozen so it's not like they're going bad...idk . It's how we've always done it never got sick once. Just come home wash them off with the garden hose toss them in a ziplock and in the freezer . So am I missing something or ?

Nothing wrong with freezing fish whole.
They will keep longer in the freezer that way if you want to keep fish that long.

I don't want the guts and bacteria in them when they are thawing out. Just seems like a bad idea. Do the job right from the start. I don't know about the bacteria in fish guts but the bacteria in warm blooded animals start doing bad things before the animal is thawed out enough to process

Yup!

x2

Nothing wrong with that if you are going to use them for bait. I could easilly fillet any one of them bags of fish in 15 min. Probably do the whole pile in an hour, when they were fresh.

This could fall in line with Marty's post about how soft is our country lol.
Peaple worried obout eating fish that have been frozen whole?
Now want some potentially hazardous fish let's talk sushi!!

I freeze whole fish most of the time. If you glaze them after freezing a couple times they keep much fresher.
A whole fish is less likely to get freezer burn as well.

I butcher them while still a bit frozen. Very easy to clean the guts then too.

I always felt they tasted dirty done that way so I dont do it. May just be me.

I like them filleted and vacuum bagged. Keep quite awhile like that. Never tried frozen whole. Think if I did I would want them alive going in the freezer and better quality bagas.

Don't know. I always cleaned them right away and will continue to do so.

They should be alright. Icefisherman don't always process their fish as soon as they are caught. I've brought home plenty of fish popcicles.

does it make them harder to scale if they've been frozen? or do you scale them first?
I have never been able to control myself long enough to let them freeze. I usually eat them the same day I catch them, haha.
I did switch to scale em ,gut em, head em, fry em a couple years ago.
I never minded filleting them ,but now I prefer whole.

Hey Wolfdog. if you ever get up towards Dubuque Iowa, on the Mississippi, let me know.
every time I see a barge now ,I think ...hmmm, wonder if Wolfdog is on that one?

I always clean and fillet them, mostly to save space.

scale em gut em into freezer camp they go, round here it's a real short stay tho .

This^^^^ is correct!

That is a lazy person that freezes em whole.

Cleaned and put up

only real advantage to cleaning them ahead of time that I can think of is they take up less space in the freezer. room for more goodies

If you are worried about fish not keeping long enough in the freezer when fileted you are not living right. A fish fry is a weekly occurrence in the summertime!

Why are we talking about soured rice (sushi)?

it used to be restaurants would get fish with head or gills removed and the gut removed and they stored ok

what we call a beaver knife commercial fisherman call a fish knife , the round end knife, they slice up the belly and turn the knife 90 degrees and push the gut out .

when my son worked at the restaurant they got everything in individual fillets in plastic pouches , he was probably the only person at that restaurant who knew how to fillet from whole.
and they were well know for their Friday night fish fry

my cousin has a Filet machine , it is very cool , they scale the fish , head and gut them same as always , then they lay them on the line and the machine slices with the big deli type cutting wheels and takes the fillets off the spine , then they take a small knife and remove the y-bone they do mostly whitefish
he then has a chamber vac sealer and you get fillets in whatever package size you request.

given the specialized machines efficiency and most restaurants want fillets and have cooks not chefs it saves a lot of time at the kitchen end to have everything frozen in 2 fillet packets , then you hire a kid who keeps running to the freezer all night and bringing up boxes of fish and thawing them in one of the big sinks in the plastic , when they are thawed he slices the packaging and starts laying them out on a rack to drain , then into the beer batter and fryer.

it reduces space , talent , tools , makes the product last longer in storage and easier to use fast when an order comes in trading plastic waste for food waste.

I have never tried it gut in head on , so I have no comment on that , I would do head of gut out we do that for fish we freeze to smoke later and it works well
I like chunked also , give me gutted and chunked Lakers and I will boil them. love boiled laker , whitefish is good if you have the nets but they don't take hook in the summer well.

if your fillets are a bit old and you want to freshen them up whole milk is the answer
if they have a fishy smell to them it is the enzyme all fish have and all get fishy smelling with a little time , some oxidizes faster , a soak in milk 20-30 minutes is recommended I have done it for hours with no issue to the fish did a cat fish last weekend that way , son caught it over night I think about 01:00 pulled in the drive at 03:30 and walked in the house to pass out so I get the fish out of the bait bucket live well at 09:00 warm and bright sun it is stiff partially curled ,not cold at all and slimy not smelling too good hosed off and , fillet as normal and after skinning and rinsing put those fillets in milk in a bag in the fridge , we had it that night after a rinse and pat dry on paper towel .bread and fry and you wouldn't know it hadn't looked so good when I took it out of the bait bucket.

the oxidized fish enzyme that makes fishy smell, binds to the milk possibly the fat and is washed away is how I understand it to work.

I filet my fish before I freeze it in a freezer bag with water. Keeps a year or more that way.

Numerous scientific studies have been done and Jeff is correct. Fish frozen whole, and especially if glazed repeatedly, last much longer and resist freezer burn much better than those with the skin broken or even worse with the skin removed. Those are facts.

I fish year round, so I never have many fish in the freezer.

As a matter of fact, I try not to freeze fish at all...even ice fishing. When I'm ice fishing, I put my fish on a stringer and keep them in the water, below the ice. I don't like them to freeze with the guts in them.

No question, the best fish is fish that's fresh and never frozen, but I realize not many people have that luxury.

I couldn't care less what others do or how they deal with their fish.

Same here as to not freezing. I do some but very few compared to what we eat fresh....

x2

A century or so ago, the commercial fishing industry had gotten so large and widespread that ir was forced to explore and test methods of processing and preserving catches made far distant from home ports or distribution centers. Among those who pioneered freezing as an option was a man named Clarence Birdseye and many of the techniques developed during this period were extended to vegetables and meats other than fish.

In a nutshell, the way that freezing foods works best at preserving and retaining as close to fresh quality as possible is to freeze very rapidly and cut off oxygen to the frozen product. Some methods are superior to others. For example, polyethelene is permeable to oxygen so it does not make a good container for stopping oxidation. Rapid freezing is often accomplished by creating relatively thin layers of product on metal plates that can be really cold. Much experimentation and a century of use have resulted in superior frozen products in many cases.

That's how I do it also.I will fill a Ziplock freezer bag between half and 3/4 with fillets.Then add enough water to cover the fillets,,and squeeze the air out of the bag while sealing it.Results in fillets frozen in solid ice with no air.Will last well over a year like that.

We use to take whole perch that we caught through the Ice and put them In those waxed cardboard milk containers. Fill with water and place in the freezer. A month or so later thaw and clean and eat. Never had a issue with that system.

I have eaten red snapper caught fresh and baked with the scales and guts still In the fish. Tasted just fine.

Shore lunch is as fresh as it gets.
But got to freeze some-gut is only so big.

Cant beat a shore lunch for FRESH.

One spring we went out and smoked the 3/4 to lb sunnies. Came back and didn't have time to clean them before work. Tossed them in the freezer and when we took them out 2 days later, they were mush.

My friend's dad read us the riot act because we should have been smart enough to not wreck multiple limits of huge fish.

Never did it since except for creek chubs for bait.

I vacuum pack all my fish fillets. Can't tell them from fresh up to a year later.

Common practice for commercial crab bait.

Freezer space is the reason we’ve always cleaned them. Couldn’t fit but one fish fry in the freezer if we kept them whole, lol.

Put it this way you wouldn’t put a deer or rabbit in the freezer unprocessed so why would you do that to fish other than coon bait

We have done it to small game and birds plenty of times

Never froze fish on purpose but had them freeze while fishing lots and lots of time- sometimes they thaw out and start flopping again.

Guys I think Wolfie is trolling us and those fish are bait fish.

Ummm no actually... I mean there's some stuff I could say about common outdoor practices in different communities but, I'd rather not start down that road

Same here,rabbits especially,since they are already frozen in the snares.
No point in thawing out to process then re freeze after.Just process when ready to prepare.

If your freezer is capable of freezing whole fish solid in a hurry like a perch thrown on the ice while ice fishing on a January day up north, it stands to reason that freezing them in a good freezer and cleaning them later would be no different.

Being a retired taxidermist, i admit I have eaten literally hundreds and hundreds of fish that were frozen whole......usually after being frozen several months. If a customer didn't want the meat saved for them, I would very often save it for myself and many times those fish were not skinned to mount until months after they were brought to me. The meat was always fine.

Interesting. Do you eat a lot of deer neck roast as well?

So none of you guys that shoot deer in freezing temps field dress your deer? Y’all just hang them with guys and all until the next day when you have time to process the meat?
Now we’ve caught fish and kept them in a cooler on ice and cleaned them the next day, but we don’t purposely freeze anything whole and wait until time to eat it to clean it.

Sorry but I really feel the a 200lbs furry deer and a 1lbs bluegill aren't really a fair comparison

Same poop different pile.

I remember when my Dad would shoot ducks they would hang or lay on cool basement floor for a couple of days before they would be cleaned. I think that was pretty common for game birds in some areas.

Keeping whole fish in a cooler of ice for 24 hours is a worse idea that freezing them whole right after catching them.
Fish on ice will not reach below 32 degrees, if that, and if half of the ice melts, they will only cool down to exactly 32 degrees. The texture of the meat will suffer.
Physics.
Its not just a suggestion.
Its the law.