How to kill a trout

Twist its head side ways and snap its neck.

I don't fish with hook and line much anymore but I'm pretty involved in freediving and spearfishing in the ocean. Having a few live, twitching, bleeding fish on your stringer while diving is a great way to attract sharks, seals, and sea lions. It can also make it hard to swim/dive if the fish is big. So spearfishermen generally kill the fish immediately.

Look up the Japanese term ikejime.
Here's the wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikejime

I didn't know about this technique until I started spearing but I don't understand why all fishermen don't use it.

Basically, you immediately sever the spinal cord/brain of the fish with a spike or pointed knife. There are a few ways to know you're aiming in the right spot and a few angles of approach you can use.

Done properly, the fish is dead instantly.

Apparently many sushi chefs believe this is the only way to kill a fish; it's instant and produces less stress and supposedly better meat. I don't know about that, but I think it's a very fast and clean way to kill fish, less mess and clumsy than trying to smash their heads with something, less cruel than letting them suffocate slowly.

I use a diving knife with a stiletto point like this:

Granted, I'm killing fish much bigger than trout. Don't know how applicable it is to freshwater for some people, but it's what I'd do.

According to this article, the method Craig mentions above is what Daniel Galhardo of Tenkara USA uses:

http://www.tenkarausa.com/cooking-trout-campfire/

He also shows a unique way to gut and cook trout.

Trout have really thick skulls, so knocking them unconscious can be hard. With salmon, a light bonk on the head and they are out cold. I saw my friend gut a trout once (after removing its head) and it was still twitching a little, so they may twitch even when dead.

For small trout (<15") I simply snap the head back, twist and remove it. Then I gut him out with my knife. Since I am usually interested in finding out what they have been eating, I will often split the stomach open and drip a few drops of water into the contents, kind'a poking out any bugs. Trouble is, this does NOT always give you a good color match, though usually you can get a fairly accurate size/type match.

This has the dual effect of severing the lower artery and breaking his spine. They don't usually object to this if done quickly.

But in the video where Galhardo is gutting the fish, it does not appear that the fish has been killed – its tail is flipping during the gutting, and the mouth opens and closes during the process, opening very wide as he pulls out the guts through the gill.

>"how do you kill a trout before gutting and cleaning it ?"

I do no Tenkara fishing and very little with a rod&reel because one catches a lot more fish with a 5-foot-diameter hand net in the river or 60 feet of net in the salt water.

But I do put about 30-40 salmonids into the freezer each year, mostly sockeyes (red salmon) but also some silvers, Dolly Varden, and an occasional king. I've found I get much better quality meat that lasts longer when I do the following:

– break one or both gills and let the fish "bleed out" while it is still alive

– Get the fish on ice ASAP

– fillet it and get it vac-packed ASAP

– freeze it quickly by stacking it on wire racks in multiple freezers, sometimes with a fan in the freezer, rather than in one big lump.

Over the last 16 years, as I've gotten more religious about those practices, the quality of the fish has gone up to the point where I'll stop fishing even in the middle of a hot run because I feel I should do right by the 20 fish already in the cooler than stay longer, get more fish, but not handle the fish I have as well as I possibly can.

We have a name for C&R: "Playing with your food". But then, we have the luxury of world-class fisheries of very high-quality food fish, so we tend to get our fishing fix while filling the freezer for the coming year.

Culturally, California focuses more on minimizing suffering through a "clean kill" while Alaskans feel they honor the animal and the resource by wasting no meat and if you take an animal you process it in a way that fully utilizes the meat ("wanton waste" is rigorously enforced in hunting and fishing here and there's a joke that you're more likely to be arrested for taking the antlers without all the meat (which is illegal) than you are for killing a human). So we bleed fish while Californians bonk them on the head. If I'm not going to bleed out a fish, I bonk it on the head (18 inches of metal pipe works well), with the exception of halibut over 80 pounds – we shoot those in the head before bringing them onboard because of the risk of injury when it is flopping around on deck.

Edited to add: Here are the kids and me with a morning's catch:

I guess in spite of being a native born Californian, I'm with the Alaskans on this one. If I'm going to keep a fish (the only legit reason for fishing as far as I'm concerned – but that's my ethic and I'm not trying to condemn or convert anyone), I insert a sharp knife into the belly side just behind the gills. This cuts through the major arteries and the fish bleeds out very quickly, but leaves the meat in great condition. No flipping or twitching when gutting.

>"in spite of being a native born Californian"

I'm a fifth-gen native San Franciscan (one grandmother was there for the earthquake and the other grandmother had the same Chemistry professor (in 1917) at UCB as I did), so conversion is possible.

A fillet knife through the gills is quick and easy. With a little practice, a finger hooking the gills and a tug is even quicker.

I find that I can get a near instant kill with a rock. But there is a small trick to doing it right. I used to hit them on the side of the head (think, near the eye), but that only stunned them. Or, at least, the flopping continued for some time after that.

When I started applying a swift rock to the top of the head (between and above the eyes) the death has been much quicker. Typically, I get a shiver and that's it. It rarely takes more than one blow.

Perpendicular slice behind the head. Instant. Say Thank You.

Got a lot of bones, but so tasty.

…

"Ziplock with some water and toss in the freezer. Cold numbs the pain. This is what I do. "

That sounds like a slow way to die.

…

First it should be noted that dead fish will still wriggle around. They have a lot of reflexes. I've seen plenty of fish that have been completely gutted that still flop a little or even have their mouths move as if they are gasping for air.

If I want to kill and gut a fish instantly, I will cut it's head off immediately after bringing it on shore. I will use my left foot to pin the fish down because they are slippery when trying to hold down by hand. With the fish pinned I will use a downward pressure and sawing motion to cut off it's head. Often I will put the fish down on a nearby log for easier cutting. Then I will gut the fish right after that.
I don't plan on cooking the head anyways so it's works well.
The problem with bonking a fish over the head is that it will still (in my experience) wiggle around.
Even if you stab it in the brain, it will still wiggle around right after.
You don't want to gut a slippery fish with a sharp knife while it's flopping around.
After completely cutting of it's head it will rarely have an reflexes left. This is why I like that method.

However, having the head attached is useful for transportation. You can use a stringer line through the gills to haul around fish or you can shove a stick through the gills and out the mouth and carry a few on one stick.
In those cases I will stab it in the head, let it sit for a few minutes while I'm still fishing, and come back later when it's less floppy to gut it.

My short answer to your question RJ is to immediately decapitate and gut the fish. This will ensure a humane kill and make things easier for you.

This thread reminds me of the "priest", a dainty rod of the right size and weight for bopping fish on the head/brain. My main experience with these specifically is in youtube vids of very English fly fishermen dispatching their catch in an oh so civilized manner. Leave it to fly fishermen to develope a specialized bit of kit just for dispatching the fish. The head bonk, if you know how to do it correctly (with our without a dedicated bit of kit), works fine on larger fish and is reputed to be instantaneous and humane. A rock or stick will work. You bop them on top of the head behind the eyes at or a little forward of the gill slits. The knife insertion work very well and for more or less the same reason. On the Toulumne recently all of Trout I could catch were 6" and my tiny spiderco bug knife (0.2 oz) dispatched 3 of these when I wanted an extra meal, but my hand got bloody enough (I and I guilty enough) to wonder if a larger knife might be better when dealing with fish. I wonder is there is an extra dainty priest?

For the more highly skilled (as in "the more you know the lest you need") there is also the the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart technique (fish version) ;-):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5eAyr_ByBM

I'm with Ken; swift knife slash through the spine behind the head. A rock works fine, you just have to hit them harder than you probably think.

As for the twitching, involuntary muscle movement does not necessarily equal life. I was taking a deer apart yesterday and a few flank muscles were still twitching eratically 30 minutes after I had blown its heart to smithereens with a .308. This with both right quarters already removed!