cleaning bluegill

[Joe826]

there's a lake that's very close to me and it has tons of bluegill. i hear they're very good to eat but they're so small that i usually do a really bad job cleaning them. can anyone tell me if there's a standard way to do this?

also, if you have a good way to cook them, please chime in, otherwise i'll probably just cook them like i cook trout, which is to just bread and fry them.

[stankybank]

search here (http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&hl=en&q=cooking+bluegill&btnG=Goog le+Search)

[Skipbidder]

You should fillet them, beer batter them, and deep fry em.
Not very healthy, but certainly good eats.
Filleting takes some skill to do well. When you first try it, you will waste some meat. I don't know whether or not I could describe it very well here. Perhaps one of the sites that the earlier poster listed might help you.
I yahood "filleting panfish" and got this one near the top:
http://www.filletking.com/perfectfillets.html
It looks perfectly reasonable.

By the way, don't throw the little ones back. These aren't bass or muskie or walleye. The population is likely to be quite large already. You probably aren't doing any good by throwing them back. (This last paragraph is mostly advice from my father's side of family, who are frequently full of BS, coupled with Department of Natural Resources information that is at least 15 years old. So take it with a grain-or tablespoon--of salt.)

[krazyace5]

Scale it, cut the head off, gut it, rinse, roll in flour and fry it up.