What do folks think is the best fillet knife for panfish? After an agonizing two and a half hours of filleting last night my hands will barely work today. I used an old electric twister and while it works pretty well, I think I had nightmares about fish cleaning and thought I'd ask this question today. I think I'm going to start filleting as we catch them and simply leave the skin on until I get home but if I do that an electronic won't work.

I use a 6 in. Forchner flexible almost razor blade thin Knife an electric cant keep up with me I am not sure they even make this knife anymore

I don't care for the electric knife. I just bought a new Buck filet knife, it works fine. What I found out while shopping for a knife is I couldn't find one that was made in the USA. Seem like all the big name knife makers moved to China and the quality is not as good as it used to be. Sad but true!

Ummm….Isn't that what WIVES are for???? Shouldn't have caught so many!

I use an electric for all fish. A fish cleaning board that clamps the tail and the board up on a couple of 2x4 helps for panfish. I leave the fillet attached to the tail, flip it over and remove the skin with electric, after I get all of them cleaned I remove the rib cage with an electric. I buy electric knives at garage sales for $1.00 or less. h.h.

I use an electric knife. I do gills to steelhead and fly through it pretty quick. Throbak - maybe one of these days we can have a race . Dave - they make cordless ones.

Bean At KY Lake at the cleaning station a they stop cleaning fish and watch Me

Nice. Just messing with ya. Like watch people. Interesting how different people do it but have the same outcome.

I know how to use one, but don't care for an electric knife. Clean hundreds of panfish every year side by side with buddies using electric knives and I can whip them out nearly as fast.

Hard to be at the basic 6"-7" blade, wood handle, Rapala fillet knives that they have been making forever. They sharpen easily, and are easy to keep sharp if you know what you are doing with a butchers steel.

Here's what I normally use on gills....it's a well used Forschner 6" boning knife after a "just a few" years of sharpening... I have an electric I'll use on crappie from time to time.

Steiny makes a good point on the old Rapala knives. My Dad used a Rapala filet knife for as long as I can remember. Always the same dang one! I can remember him using his old gray stone to sharpen this knife the day before we went in search of the elusive bluegill, because he knew we'd be using it the next day. My Dad lived for bluegill fishing...and we were on the water almost every weekend...soft water or ice. When Dad passed,,I made sure I grabbed that knife, and use it almost every time I clean gills. It's getting a little fragile in the handle, and am thinking about retiring it. Here's just a couple pics to compare the exact same new knife versus the one my Dad used.I couldn't begin to guess how many gills were cut up with this knife.

Ive cleaned so many walleyes I can do one in 15 seconds using an electric knife. Key is to leave the fillet attached to the tail, then flip it over and skin it. Fillet comes off and skin stays with the body. h.h.

I do it the same way HH. Had to custom make a cleaning board for the ones I fillet though. 3' striper + 3' fillet = 6' cleaning board when you leave it attached to the carcass!

That is what i do as well.

i have never tried an electric. I am slow but have a couple filet knives i have acquired the last few years. I just limit my fisherman (my nine year old) to 10-15 nice gills a trip so that i am not cleaning fish all night!

Yup! That's how you do it! Weedy gave me an elertric one but I'm afraid I'll get hurt if I try and use it! Hunt and fish on!!

I use an electric knife on panfish and a rapala filet knife to carve out the rib cage.
I was dead set against the electric knife because I was the fastest fish cleaner I had ever seen, but I realized that even though I could keep up with a guy holding electric... I had sweat pouring off of me and he was working effortlessly at the same speed. Now that I've been using electric for 15 years, there's no way a regular knife can keep up.
For bigger fish where time isn't that big of a deal, I'll just use the old wood handled rapala.
My Dad had a really cool looking and expensive "folding" filet knife made by chicago cutlery...It looked cool but it wasn't nearly as nice in the and as the rapala.

I have the old mister twister electric model. It gets the job done.