The Best Way to Fillet a Bass

 From my experience filleting Bass I have found one method that is the simplest and easiest. It provides perfect fillets, takes very little time, and does not require opening up the guts. This method of filleting Bass requires starting from the top of the fish and working down the fillet.

1. Hold the fish on its side with its belly facing you. Start by making an incision behind the gill and behind the side fin. Cut down and inwards on a slight angle toward the fishes head until you hit bone.
2. Now spin the fish around so that its spine is facing you. Starting from the incision behind the gill, run you knife along the spine towards the tail. Keep cutting deeper along the spine until you feel the rib cage. With you knife, slowly cut along the rib cage until you feel it end, once past the ribcage push your knife fully through the fish. Cutting from there, all the way back, to the tail, separating the back of the fillet from the fish.
3. Keep running you knife along the rib cage  going around them while working your way down to the belly of the fish. Stay as close to the ribs as possible. Once you make it all the way around the rib cage you cut the fillet off.
4. Remove the skin by holding the fillet skin down. Start at the tail. Cut under the fillet on a slight angle into the skin. Holding the skin, not the meat, cut all the way down the fillet separating the skin from the fillet.

Remember: If you are planning on freezing the fish and transporting it to take home. You must leave a little bit of skin visible on the fillet, in order to for the ministry to identify the species. There are huge fines if you caught with fillets that are out of season and illegal.

This is the method i have used for years and have found to work the best and it is the easiest. 

Here is a video i found to help you better understand what I'm taking about.

http://youtu.be/QDeXjmsTFt4