Ok, I finally broke down before the last perch trip and made my trip to Bass Pro Shops in Rossford. Went right to the shelf after talking it up with one of the guys I used to work with, and bought a Tumble Drumm fish scaler. I did some research, looked around and asked a lot of questions. Cost of the unit was $199.99+tx.
First impression was really good, although it took a bit longer than I thought it would. Perch are supposed to take the longest to get the scales off, and although I was told about 20 minutes, it took about 10 minutes longer for 20 perch to get done. Even then, and I don’t consider this a big deal, I had to scrape maybe four or five in each batch with a straight edged steak knife to get a few patches that did not come clean.
When the first batch came out, I had plenty of time to get them sliced before the second batch was ready to come out of the scaler. Everything goes a lot faster when you aren’t trying to poke through scales. The skin was not beat up, and was impressed with the overall condition of the meat on the fish.
Now bluegill and crappie are supposed to take less time to get scaled once they go through the unit. Thinking they could take an honest 20 minutes. Although I am sure most people checked the progress while scaling and estimated the time it took to complete the job. I used a timer to check, so I could have an accurate time to report in this review.
I will be getting another unit to report on sometime either next month or in December. I should be able to catch enough bluegill and crappie to give that unit a proper test when it arrives. Looks like I might be going into the fish cleaning biz!