How to Fillet a Walleye: Step-by-Step Guide (Including the Zipper Method)

🗓️ Updated March 2026  ·  ⏱ 10 min read  ·  🎣 Beginner to Intermediate

Walleye is widely considered the best-tasting freshwater fish in North America — firm, white, mild, and practically boneless once you master the fillet. The problem? Most anglers either hack through their catch or leave half the meat on the carcass because nobody taught them the right technique.

In this complete guide, you’ll learn how to fillet a walleye from start to finish — including the legendary “zipper method” for removing pin bones that most fishing guides never bother to teach. Whether you’re cleaning your first walleye at the boat launch or processing a 10-fish limit at the kitchen counter, these steps will get you there fast and clean.

In this complete guide, you’ll learn how to fillet a walleye from start to finish, including some tips on how to fillet a walleye efficiently and effectively.

📋 What You’ll Learn

1. Tools You Need
2. How to Prepare Your Walleye Before Filleting
3. Step-by-Step: How to Fillet a Walleye
4. The Zipper Method: Removing Pin Bones
5. Bonus: How to Remove Walleye Cheeks
6. Using an Electric Fillet Knife
7. How to Store Walleye Fillets
8. 5 Common Mistakes to Avoid
9. Frequently Asked Questions

🔪 Tools You Need to Fillet a Walleye – how to fillet a walleye

Before you make your first cut, having the right setup is essential. Poor tools are the #1 reason beginners produce ragged, bone-filled fillets. Here’s what you need:

🎯 Pro Tip — Best Knife for Walleye: Most experienced walleye anglers prefer a 7.5–8 inch flexible fillet knife. The Rapala 7.5″ Single Fillet Knife and the Berkley 8″ Soft Grip Fillet Knife are trusted standards at under $20. For electric options, the American Angler PRO is the gold standard.

⚠️ Safety First: Walleye have extremely sharp dorsal spines and gill plates. Always secure the fish firmly before cutting, and fold the dorsal fin down before gripping the body. A fillet glove on your non-knife hand is strongly recommended for beginners.

🐟 How to Prepare Your Walleye Before Filleting – how to fillet a walleye

Filleting a walleye is faster and cleaner if you spend 60 seconds on preparation. You do not need to scale, gut, or clean the fish before filleting — that’s one of the great advantages of this method.

Should You Bleed Your Walleye?

Yes — and it makes a bigger difference than most anglers realize. Bleeding your walleye before cleaning produces noticeably whiter, milder-tasting fillets. To bleed a walleye, cut through the gills on both sides immediately after catching and put the fish on ice for 10–15 minutes. The blood drains out quickly, and the result is cleaner-tasting meat with no dark blood line.

Remember, the key to good fillets is knowing how to fillet a walleye properly.

Fresh vs. Frozen Walleye

Always fillet walleye as fresh as possible. Keep fish on ice in a cooler from the moment they’re caught. If you’re filleting fish caught several hours ago, keep them cold right up until you make your first cut.

📌 Do I need to scale a walleye before filleting? No. The standard filleting method removes the skin and scales together in one step. Scaling is unnecessary and wastes time.

✂️ Step-by-Step: How to Fillet a Walleye

Follow these steps in order. With practice, the entire process takes under 3 minutes per fish.

1 Place the Fish and Make Your First Cut Behind the Gills

Lay the walleye flat on your cutting board, belly facing away from you. Grip the fish firmly behind the pectoral fin — fold the dorsal spines down first to protect your hand.

Position your knife just behind the gills and pectoral fin at a slight angle toward the head. Cut down until you feel the backbone. Do not cut through the backbone.

This first cut determines the quality of your entire fillet, so take your time. Aim for a clean, angled slice that doesn’t waste the meat behind the gill plate.

2 Run the Knife Along the Backbone Toward the Tail

Once you’ve hit the backbone, rotate your knife blade so it’s pointing toward the tail. Keep the blade flat and as close to the backbone as possible — you should feel the spine with the flat of the blade as you cut.

Use long, smooth strokes to slice through the ribs toward the tail. You’ll hear and feel a slight clicking as the knife passes over the ribs — this is normal. Keep the blade angled slightly downward to hug the rib cage and preserve as much meat as possible.

Stop cutting about an inch before the tail — leave a small flap of skin connecting the fillet to the tail.

3 Flip the Fillet and Skin It

You now have a fillet attached at the tail. Flip the fillet outward away from the fish — like opening a book — so it lies flat, skin side down, next to the body.

Hold the fillet at the tail end by pinching the skin. Starting from the tail end, slide your knife between the skin and the flesh at a slight downward angle. Use a gentle sawing motion while holding the skin taut. Keep the blade as flat as possible against the skin.

Work the knife forward in smooth strokes until the entire fillet separates from the skin. Done correctly, you should be left with a clean, skin-free fillet with virtually no wasted meat.

4 Remove the Rib Cage

Place the skinned fillet on your board, rib-cage side down. This is the key — placing ribs down (not up) lets you flatten them slightly with your free hand, making the cut much easier and more precise.

Starting at the front (head) end of the ribs, insert your knife just above the rib bones. Using the tip of the blade, follow the curve of the rib cage with small, careful strokes — almost a scooping motion. Work from the front of the rib cage toward the belly edge.

The goal is to remove the ribs as a single unit without cutting away the meat below them. Take your time here — this is where beginners waste the most meat.

5 Repeat on the Other Side

Flip the fish over and repeat Steps 1 through 4 on the other side. Most anglers find the second fillet goes faster since the fish is now stable on the exposed carcass side.

You now have two raw walleye fillets — but you’re not quite done yet. The pin bones (lateral line bones) still need to be addressed. That’s where the zipper method comes in.

🎯 Pro Tip — Maximize Meat Yield: After removing both fillets, don’t throw the carcass away immediately. Run your knife along the backbone one more time — there’s often a surprising amount of quality meat left close to the spine, especially on larger fish over 18 inches.

🤐 The Zipper Method: How to Remove Walleye Pin Bones – how to fillet a walleye

This is the step that separates good walleye from great walleye. Running through the centre of every walleye fillet is a row of small Y-shaped pin bones along the lateral line. If you’ve ever bitten into a walleye fillet and hit a bone, this is why.

The zipper method removes these bones completely — and it’s much easier than it sounds once you’ve done it twice.

1 Find the Pin Bone Line

When learning how to fillet a walleye, keep in mind that practice makes perfect.

Many anglers have questions about how to fillet a walleye efficiently.

Lay the fillet flat and run your fingertip along the centre of the fillet from tail to head. You’ll feel a slight ridge — a row of tiny pin bones just under the surface. This is the lateral line. On most walleye, it’s visible as a faint darker stripe running down the middle of the fillet.

2 Make Two Cuts Along the Bone Line

Using the tip of your fillet knife, make a shallow V-cut on each side of the pin bone strip — cutting down and angling toward the bones, not straight down. You want to cut close enough to free the bones but not so deep that you lose meat.

These two cuts should run the length of the lateral line from the wide end of the fillet toward the tail, leaving a thin strip of bone-containing meat between them.

3 Grab and “Zip” Out the Bone Strip

Flip the fillet over so the tail end faces you. Grip the thin strip of bone-containing meat between your thumb and forefinger at the tail end and pull it firmly toward you in one smooth motion.

The strip will pull free from the fillet in a motion that sounds exactly like unzipping a zipper — bones, dark bloodline, and all. What remains is a perfectly boneless walleye fillet in two clean halves.

The zipper also removes the dark-coloured bloodline that runs along the lateral line — a fatty, strong-tasting strip that many anglers prefer to eliminate for the mildest possible flavour.

📌 When do pin bones matter? On walleye under 14 inches, the pin bones are very small and soften completely when deep-fried. Most experienced anglers only bother with the zipper method on fish over 15–16 inches, where the bones are large enough to be a concern when baking or pan-frying.

🏆 Bonus: How to Remove Walleye Cheeks – how to fillet a walleye

If you’re not saving walleye cheeks, you’re leaving the best part of the fish behind. Known as the “filet magnon of walleye,” cheeks are round, tender pockets of meat located just behind and below each eye. On a large walleye, each cheek yields a bite-sized nugget of the most delicate meat on the fish.

How to Remove Walleye Cheeks

1. Look at the fish’s head from the side — you’ll see a circular, bowl-shaped depression just behind and below the eye.
2. Insert the tip of your knife at the top edge of the cheek pocket and cut down and around in a circular motion, following the contour of the socket.
3. Once you’ve traced the circle, slide the knife flat between the cheek meat and the skin to separate the two.
4. The cheek pops out cleanly as a round, coin-shaped morsel of pure meat.
5. Repeat on the other side of the head.

🎯 Pro Tip: Collect walleye cheeks in a separate bag and freeze them until you have enough for a dedicated cheek fry. Anglers who’ve discovered walleye cheeks often say it’s the moment they realized what they’d been missing their entire fishing lives.

⚡ Using an Electric Fillet Knife on Walleye

Here’s how to fillet a walleye quickly and efficiently without losing any meat.

An electric fillet knife follows exactly the same steps as a manual knife — the technique is identical. The difference is speed, consistency, and reduced hand fatigue when processing large numbers of fish. Electric knives excel at the skin-removal step in particular, producing clean, paper-thin cuts that waste very little meat.

If you’re using an electric knife:

• Use the same blade angles as a manual knife — the electric blade does the work, but your hand still guides the direction
• Let the blade do the cutting — never force or push an electric fillet knife
• Keep the blade moving at all times; stopping mid-cut can tear the flesh
• Always verify the safety trigger is working before use, and never leave the knife running unattended

⚠️ Electric Knife Safety: Always cut away from your body. Keep the cord clear of the cutting area. Electric fillet knives cut through skin just as easily as fish — a fillet glove on your non-dominant hand is non-negotiable.

🧊 How to Store Walleye Fillets – how to fillet a walleye

Proper storage is the difference between walleye that tastes fresh-caught and walleye that tastes “fishy.” Follow these guidelines:

Short-Term (1–2 Days)

Rinse fillets in cold water, pat dry, and place them in a zip-lock bag on a bed of crushed ice in the refrigerator. Never let fillets sit in water or melted ice — this degrades the texture and flavour rapidly.

Long-Term Freezing

The best method for freezing walleye fillets is vacuum sealing. Vacuum-sealed walleye maintains top quality for 12+ months in the freezer with zero freezer burn. If you don’t have a vacuum sealer, the next best method is freezing fillets submerged in water inside a zip-lock bag — squeeze out all air before sealing.

🎯 Pro Tip — Best Freezing Method: Lay fillets in a single layer on a baking sheet and partial-freeze for 1–2 hours first. Then vacuum seal or water-freeze. This prevents fillets from freezing together in a clump and makes portioning much easier later.

❌ 5 Common Walleye Filleting Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

1. Using a Dull Knife

A dull knife tears flesh, wastes meat, and is genuinely more dangerous than a sharp one because it requires more pressure. Sharpen your knife before every filleting session. This is the single biggest improvement most beginners can make immediately.

2. Cutting Too Far from the Backbone

Keep the blade pressed lightly against the spine as you cut toward the tail. Every millimetre you drift away from the backbone leaves meat on the carcass. Practice this by going slowly and listening for the blade clicking against the vertebrae.

3. Rushing the Rib Cage Removal

Most wasted meat in walleye filleting happens at the rib cage. Place the fillet rib-side down, slow down, and use the tip of your knife to follow the curve of each rib. The extra 30 seconds is worth it.

4. Skipping the Zipper on Large Fish

On walleye over 16 inches, ignoring the pin bones is a mistake you’ll notice at the dinner table. The zipper method takes 15 seconds per fillet. Do it every time on big fish.

5. Not Keeping Fish Cold

Walleye that have been sitting in warm water or warm air for hours before cleaning will have noticeably softer, less flavorful flesh. Keep your catch on ice from the moment they’re landed. Cold fish fillet cleaner, firmer, and taste better.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions – how to fillet a walleye

How long does it take to fillet a walleye?

A beginner following these steps should be able to fillet a walleye in about 5–7 minutes per fish, including the zipper step. With practice, experienced anglers can process a walleye cleanly in under 2–3 minutes. Speed comes naturally — focus on technique first, and the speed follows.

Do you have to scale walleye before filleting?

No. The filleting method described above removes the skin and scales together in one step. Scaling walleye before filleting is unnecessary extra work and is not recommended.

What size walleye is best for filleting?

Walleye in the 15–20 inch range (typically 1.5–3 lbs) are considered the ideal “eating size” by most anglers. They’re large enough to produce good-sized fillets but young enough to have the mildest, most tender flesh. Very large walleye (25″+) are often released by conservation-minded anglers since they’re the most re-productively valuable fish in any lake.

How do you remove all the bones from a walleye fillet?

The zipper method (described above) removes the lateral line pin bones completely. After removing the rib cage, run your fingertip along the fillet from tail to head to feel for any remaining bones. Use needle-nose pliers or fish tweezers to pull out any strays. Done correctly, a zipped walleye fillet is completely boneless.

Can you fillet a frozen walleye?

It is possible but strongly not recommended. Frozen fish is much harder to fillet cleanly — the flesh tears rather than cuts, and you lose significant meat. Always fillet walleye fresh, then freeze the fillets.

What’s the best knife for filleting walleye?

A 7–8 inch flexible fillet knife is ideal for walleye. Popular trusted choices include the Rapala Heavy Duty 7.5″ Fillet Knife, the Berkley 8″ Soft Grip Fillet Knife, and the Dexter-Russell 8″ Fillet Knife. For electric knives, the American Angler PRO Electric Fillet Knife is the benchmark choice for serious walleye anglers.

So, if you want to enjoy this fish, understanding how to fillet a walleye is crucial.

Is walleye good eating?

Walleye is consistently ranked as the best-tasting freshwater fish in North America. The flesh is firm, white, mild, and has a delicate, slightly sweet flavor that works beautifully pan-fried, deep-fried, baked, or grilled. Many anglers who have never tried walleye before are stunned by the quality at the table.

Start Filleting Like a Pro 🎣 – how to fillet a walleye

Learning how to fillet a walleye properly is one of the most rewarding skills in freshwater fishing. Once you nail the backbone cut, master the skin removal, and add the zipper method to your repertoire, you’ll be processing fish faster and cleaner than most anglers who’ve been doing it for years.

Get a sharp knife, practice the steps on your first few fish without rushing, and don’t skip the cheeks. The best walleye you’ll ever eat is the one you fillet yourself.

Once you’ve mastered how to fillet a walleye, you can impress your friends with your skills.

Knowing how to fillet a walleye will elevate your fishing experience.

By learning how to fillet a walleye, you’re setting yourself up for fishing success.

Get ready to discover the best techniques on how to fillet a walleye today!