You will get more meat if
you filet a fish by hand rather than using a knife or having a fish
seller do it for you. Also, it will be easier to barter with fisherman
if you don't have to rely on them to clean large fish, and you'll be
able to save the liver.
 After
you filet your fish by hand, make fish-head
soup with the head and skeleton.
 Cut off fish head with sharp kitchen
scissors.
cut
off tail and
fins 
Put
scissors into
stomach and cut to end of fish 
Open
fish under running water and push out insides. Look for the liver, an
inch-long piece of squiggly stuff that looks like a long, thin,pale
piece of liver. Cut it out and save it to eat. Small though it be, it
is delicious and
nutritious. I put mine briefly into hot lard in which I cook mushrooms
and garlic.
Put scissors into fish at top of body and cut to the back. 
Put
hands into
fish at point where skeleton meats flesh and push back
flesh while simultaneously pulling out skeleton. This is easier to do
if fish has been frozen first and then allowed to thaw. You may want to
try that until you are familiar with the practice. Eventually, you
should be able to pull out the skeleton like a cartoon cat eating a
fish.
See Video
for a demonstration of the
procedure of pulling the skeleton out of the fish..
Rinse.
There are many recipes for
preparing your fish, filet,
but none are better than frying it in a pan in lard and butter and
serving with a wedge of lemon.
The Fish
That We Eat
by Anore Jones. (This is a link to a pdf document that contains the
entire 345-page
book.).
The
Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating by
Fergus Henderson. A little bit too heavy with the sugar, but it helps
explain the mysteries of some types of food preparation. Eliminate the
sugar or substitute honey or sucanat.
Full
Moon Feast by Jessica Prentice This is a good
book if you like learning about indigenous customs and
following natural cycles. Includes using coconut oil, a rootbeer recipe
that calls for only 2 tablespoons of sassafras and easy and delicious
corn fritters
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