yep, all decent size fish have cheeks. they are bit more stringy in texture but i really enjoy them.

@mt, yep, definitely have to cut the "mud line" out. all the brown glands/mucus producing stuff. ESPECIALLY on lake trout. thats why i skin everything. its worth taking the extra minute to clean off all that stuff.

i too, shy away from fish from restaurants, aside from salmon(store bought that i prepare), my wife loves the stuff

to be honest, i dont know if ive eaten a pike from canada to date? usually we have enough lakers/walleye that we dont even really think to try. same with smallmouth bass. the pike/bass from where im from are pretty mushy/soft and really slimy.

Furtman has a illustration on how to fillet a NP in his Boundary Waters Fishing Guide.
I've done it a few times and you end up with 5 fillets.
The bigger the fish the easier to get those nice long side fillets while avoiding those Y bones.

Smaller NPI do as db does and "feed the eagles".
IF your only exposure to eating pike is from warm waters, your in for a treat with cold water caught NP.
Same with bass from warm waters. I think that's the reason they invented some of those good old boy fish frying breading. It helped hide that mushy/nasty flavor.

Even if your a fan of breading/frying your fish, try just a simple pan fried fillet with minimal seasons from just SM/LGM/NP or even Walleye from a cold water source and it's head and tails better than it's warm water brethren.

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Ever notice that even if you can't see or hear a seagull for hours/miles of paddling, the minute you stop to clean your catch, they show up.

Joe_Schmeaux wrote on Sep 24^th, 2013 at 8:12pm:


On Basswood in Backbay I popped a healthy Pike off a point on a topwater ( a memorable fish).......we pulled onto a long grassy point to clean the fish and eat it. By the time we were done we had not one but two eagles fussing and picking at the pike which was apparently a bit to big to fly off with. It was quite a treat to see them so close and on the ground.......they seem so much bigger on the ground.

Another time I was on Argo and picked up a laker. I cleaned it and was in the process of frying it up when a gull showed up soon followed by an eagle. Both assumed positions in the treetops waiting for my departure. I wonder who won that battle?

I see no adverse effect from leaving cleaned fish behind. The animal kingdom is rife with such examples. From the wolves running herds of caribou and clipping the back tendons and leaving far more than they could ever eat...... to mink who kill for the fun of it and leave a bloody trail of dead things every where they go. Everything has to eat and very little actually goes to waste.

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I'm pretty sure only man kills for the "fun" of it.
Fun is something that you need a human level of intelligence to seek.

Mink kill by biting the necks of their prey.
Sever the neck artery, your going to get a lot of blood.
Animals that we say are having "fun" are just responding to outside stimuli that trigger biological responses on their part.
You take a cat/ mink/ weasel etc and put them in cage with multiple prey animals darting about, they'll attack everything that moves because it's a natural response for them.

Same with wolfs / caribou.  The wolves are just maximizing their chances for a meal by attacking as many as they can, not knowing if the animal will drop or just be wounded and escape. It's obviously a inexact "science" and that's why they sometimes kill more than they can eat. But like you said, everything needs to eat and maybe that's Natures way to make sure every predator/scavenger in that food chain has a chance to survive.

That's why animal experts say never to turn and run when facing a dangerous animal. It just triggers even more aggressive behavior.

What we humans might see as just killing for "fun" has a instinct driven reason that we might not understand but they do.