Rapala AC/DC Electric Fillet Knife – Item of the Day
Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.
Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is the Rapala AC/DC Electric Fillet Knife. So bottom line up front, 95% of the items I review I personally own, I don’t own this one yet but I soon will. Many years ago I was taught that the fastest way to filet fish was with an electric knife. I learned this from my late friend Howell Dodd.
This week I took a good old solid “mental health day” with my buddy David and we hired fishing guide Omar Cotter of Luck ‘O the Irish Guide Service. We had a great day on Tawokini. We left the ramp at 0630 and were back well before noon. Total haul…
- 50 Sand Bass (aka white bass)
- 4 Yellow bass (that were worth keeping)
- 1 Blue Cat
- 1 Striper
We also caught a lot of hybrids just a few inches under the legal limit of 18 inches and tons of yellow bass that were hand sized. Here is a photo of our haul below.
Now one of the best parts about fishing with a guide other than they know exactly how and where to put you on fish all season long is well, they generally clean your fish for you. I was not at all surprised to see Omar whip out an electric knife, every guide I know in North Texas seems to use one. Speed is life in business.
What did surprise me what the particular model he was using of course it was the Rapala AC/DC Electric Fillet Knife. There was a good cleaning station at the ramp and he simply had this knife clipped onto the battery in his boat and went to town, cleaning about 1 fish both fillets off and skinned in about 30 seconds a fish.
Again 95% of the items I review I personally own and have put though the ringer a while before recommending them. In this instance though I have no qualms taking Omar’s recommendation. Omar fishes for a living running about 2-6 trips a week almost year round and has been doing this now for over 20 years. If there was a better tool for this job he would own it.
From a flexibility stand point this tool is awesome. Because it uses both AC or DC if you have power you can use it, because I have yet to see a power option besides AC or DC. This means when you are camping with your 4 wheeler you can use it, if you have a battery on your boat you can use it, heck the thing will even work if the grid is down with your Steven Harris approved battery back up system.
It comes with 6 and 7.5 inch blades so it is up to cleaning just about anything you would be cleaning in bulk. It made short work and never slowed down going from 11 inch white bass to a 18 inch blue cat and on to a 20 inch striped bass.
One recommendation I have would be to add a couple Rapala Filet Gloves to your kit with this. You only need one in the non knife hand but they do wear out in time, so two is one and one is none you know. While these will help prevent cutting yourself, the bigger thing they do is help you hold onto a slimy fish so that your work is easier.
The entire kit comes in a great hard case to keep everything organized and dry if you store it in a boat, etc. If you wear the blades out you can replace them with out buying an entire new kit but let me tell you such blades last a long time anyway. The cost is a great as well, the Rapala AC/DC Electric Fillet Knife will only set you back about 42 bucks with free shipping on prime. So if you want to clean more fish faster than you ever have before check out this piece of kit today.
Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com
P.S. – As soon as Omar finished up I was ready to kick myself for not videoing him in action with this knife. But I checked YouTube an found this video of some guys cleaning sand bass with the same knife.
Just ignore the end where they talk about the second board and the blood line and other bones, it is all mythological nonsense. Tune in today to episode 2020 hear how to skip all that when it comes to sand bass. They are also going a bit slow because they seem new to using this knife and are doing it to teach. Once you get skilled with this tool, it is amazing how fast you can really go.
P.S.S. – It likely goes without saying but I can’t recommend Omar Cotter of Luck ‘O the Irish Guide Service enough if you want a guided trip in North Texas. His lakes of choice are Lake Grapevine and Lake Tawakoni. Either way a trip is 275 bucks and all you need to bring with you is a license and a cooler with ice to take your fish home with you. Two guys splitting that is about 140 a piece and that is not expensive for a great day on the lake and a cooler of fish.
And if you guide any guide does a great job for you please consider tipping them, it is a tough job these guys do and good ones always work hard to make sure client get a great trip.
Just a note- I use the guts, head and bones for crawdad traps. I will use them after I fish or freeze them for later use.
I used them a lot as catfish chum as well. Freeze in a big ball, toss it in a catfish hole and let it sink and slowly melt on the bottom. Works really well.
Nice haul of pescado boys!
I can’t recommend hiring a experienced guide enough. I spent way too many no catch trips trying to find fish on my own boat in the bays between Galveston and Freeport before I broke down and hired a pro to put me on top of the best trout and redfish I’ve ever caught.
Got rid of my boat and find it 5x cheaper to hire a guide to take me and my friends fishing now. Just sayin…
Yep it depends if you are not going to get out 4-6 times a month buying and maintaining a boat really is hard to justify it is why I haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
My old man, brother, and I all have this knife (dad had it first and we got one for birthday/Christmas from him). I have used it for years cleaning freshwater spots, large mouth, bluegill, etc. Everything Jack said about it is true. It works great and is easy to clean. Each of us have cleaned tons of fish with it and ours have held up really well. We take a lot of night trips in the spring so cleaning fish at 2-3 am can be a chore, so the easier and faster the better. This thing beats a fillet knife for almost all jobs. We still keep and use a regular fillet knife for a few things, but the electric knife is the go to. Thanks for the show Jack!