I recently received a True 4” SYK Fillet Knife to test. I took it on a Redfishing trip in Louisiana with Native Adventures, but didn’t have an application to test it on that week, since we were catching big fish. But two weeks later, I had a crappie fishing trip in Oregon. I thought this was the trip that I’ll test it out on.
On the Oregon trip, I caught half a cooler of nice crappie in 4 ½-hours. I didn’t get home until midnight, so I threw a bag of ice on top of the fish to hold them over until the next morning.
True Syk 4″ Fillet Knife
The next morning I set-up and started filleting. I’d knocked off early fishing but still had 46 crappie to clean. For Oregon, they were big with 42 of them being 10-11 ¼ inches long. So, due to the larger size of this catch, I’d rather have a 6-inch blade to fillet with. Plus, anymore, if I have a big batch of fish to fillet, I use an electric knife since they are so much faster.
However, even when you use an electric fillet knife, you may still slip and need a straight knife to complete the job. (If you’ve never filleted with an electric knife, you can slip and cut through the back bone or accidently slice the fillet off before you’ve cut off the skin/scales so you’ll and need a straight knife to correct things).
So the True 4” SYK Fillet Knife was a handy knife to have to correct any mistakes that I made. Plus, where it really came in handy was to remove the rib cages. Yes, you can cut off the rib cage with an electric knife, but with a straight blade, you can angle under the rib cage when removing it, plus angle back around the end of the rib cage, thereby leaving more meat on the fillet. (This last cut will produce a “J” looking fillet).
For larger crappie like these, I also like to remove the meat from the top of the rib cages. If you’re filleting a big batch of fish, this little cut will provide one more meal. The True 4” SYK Fillet Knife worked great to remove this small slice of meat from the outside of the rib cages.
I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I think the True 4” SYK Fillet Knife is a sharp-looking knife. The bright lime green blade nicely offsets the dull blue handle.
The True 4” SYK Fillet Knife comes with a nice molded sheath that has a lanyard slot. I like that the sheath has eight holes on each side, which allows the blade to dry out quickly. The sheath allows you to safely carry and store it, plus the blade won’t get dinged up if you throw it in your tackle box.
The handle is semi-soft and has a no-slip grip, which is imperative when filleting wet, slimy fish. The blade has a Cerakote finish which will help reduce corrosion, I imagine even in salt water but I don’t know that for a fact.
I about wrapped up this review by stating that while I liked the True 4” SYK Fillet Knife for removing rib cages on smaller fish like crappie but that I couldn’t give it my stamp of approval for a fillet knife because the blade is too short and a little too stiff.
But as usual at the end of a review I went to the company website to get a copy of the company specs and noticed that the name on the website site has SYK 4” “TROUT” FILLET KNIFE as the title whereas on the package it just states SYK 4” FILLET KNIFE.
The word TROUT totally changed my perspective. Whereas I was not going to recommend it as a good option for filleting crappie, bass etc. it would be an excellent choice for filleting trout. In fact, we’re going to pack into the high country on horses in August after the snow melts and do some backcountry flyfishing. I’m now going to throw it in my pack to fillet some trout for dinner every night.
The traditional way to fry up backcountry brookies is to eviscerate, cut out the gills and fry with the head on your trout. Which is fine but it takes up a lot more skillet space and uses more grease than if you fillet your catch.
And due to the thinner bodies of a trout, the 4-inch blade will work perfectly. So yes, the True 4” SYK Fillet Knife will be an excellent little trout filleting knife. The MSRP IS $24.99.
About Tom Claycomb
Tom Claycomb has been an avid hunter/fisherman throughout his life as well as an outdoors writer with outdoor columns in the magazine Hunt Alaska, Bass Pro Shops, Bowhunter.net and freelances for numerous magazines and newspapers. “To properly skin your animal you will need a sharp knife. I have an e-article on Amazon Kindle titled Knife Sharpening for $.99 if you’re having trouble.”
