.

Not much oil is derived from some fish as time will show you. Just water and sludge. I have worked with carp, catfish, trout and salmon. I use trout and salmon primarily they give the best and most oil production from those that I have worked with. Paddle fish if available produces a good quality oil.

Heads only dont have alot of tissue for much fat content. They have some oil but we have to work for volume production. We use the the entire fish less the fillets that have been removed. At times we get (morts) entact full body fish that we chop up in pieces for faster break down decomposition. The more meat/tissue the more oil potential if the fish has the fat content to begin with.

Full sun exposure or a heat box of sorts will yield faster results. Allowing the container to breathe and keeping out flies is most important and keeping animals out. I bag my buckets in trash bags so as not to damage or put holes in my bucket lids. Of course we do 50 to 80 buckets at a time. We dont have a long enough heat index here at times to allow for good cook time.

I have considered buying an old box trailer for this purpose but haven't done it yet. We deal with warmer days and cooler nights which is not the most ideal cooking method.

Where you live it shouldnt be a problem for a good cook time. Let us know how your oil collection works out.

Excellent, thank you.



I'd read the "oil in head" part I mentioned on tman. ( I thought everything on tman was true? LOL ).


I'm glad you straightened that out. I have access to all the Shad and pogey I could need, those will be what I start with. Carp are hard to come by for me, but I do have access to Buffalo. They'd probably be good too. Are all fish rendered for oil treated the same? (Same sun cooking method)?

The Shad and pogey I have access to are both whole and cut, it just depends on when I pick them up. When they're cut, I can cherry pick whatever pieces I want, and that's why I mentioned the heads.



Is there any part of the fish that's better than the rest for doing this?. Examples would be the section that includes the guts, head, etc.... any part better than the others since I have a choice?

Don't know what a pogey is but the shad I catch here don't work to good for oil. this works good for draining off the oil. oil comes out last. (top layer) They sell these at Walmart for making sun tea

I used small bluegill and perch whole. Packed into mason jars. Popped small holes into canning lid. Used a square of tshirt material over lid but under ring. Tied each jar to a different apple tree branch so sun would hit it. After 2 months, I strained them and let the different liquids separate. Was not much left for solids. The clear beautiful golden oil floats and can be decanted for use, the other liquid is really nasty water and can be used for trailing scent Coon trapping. Works great.

I heard it had to be stirred occasionally. That's why the jars were tied in trees. When the wind blew and it stirred them for me.

Make sure to use a tree far away from houses.......

Made a lot of oil. Had quite a few quarts of throwbacks.

I do like bob jameson on a smaller scale. fill a couple five gallon buckets with fish that are froze. froze makes it easy to whack into chunks with an axe. bucket lids are vented with an aquarium stone. after a few months of hot summer I pour the contents through a window screen saving the liquid and discarding the solids. the liquid is allowed to separate in a container like the one above at least a week.

heres a tip. if your neighbor has a dog he wont keep home leave the solids where fido can find them. especially effective if fido is a indoor outdoor dog.

For venting buckets and to save the integrity of the lids I found that using a tire valve stem with the core removed allows good venting of gas without putting holes in your bucket lids. I have to stack buckets 4-6 high for space saving. If not I would have to add on to my building or build more shelving to contain all the aging materials.

Notice I just drill the hole for the valve stem just below the bucket lid closure area.Once the core is removed I put the cap on loosely to allow the gas to escape without fly problems. Just dont overfill your containers as you will have what I call volume expansion. Some materials will swell in the container as it begins to break down and will rise like fresh prepared bread dough with yeast. Regardless of any venting that you have done. Fish doesnt do this much however glands and other tissues will rise.

my hats off to you guys i have tried numerous times to make sun rendered fish oil but all I get is fish juice! it has some oil to it because it wont freeze I use those 55 gallon plastic barrels with gaskets and draw bands for the lid no venting needed in three years ive added fish to that barrel every spring to this day I do not see a visible layer of oil and ive tried catfish spoon bill and gizzard shad. Don't think I can add any fish this year its over half full of liquid now.I believe adding more fish would cause it to hit critical mass. Oh well guess I can start another barrel. Makes for a good place to get rid of my catfish and spoonbill carcasses no guts just heads and skin and skeleton

Tony,

Fish types determine oil production. Certain types of fish will do much better than others. Some don't do any in my experience.

Take a spoon and carefully skim off the top layer of what I call fish foam and see what is under that layer of foam. It shouldn't be more than a 1/2" or so deep. "If" you have had oil develop in the drum I bet you should find your layer of oil there. Some of our batches just have the oil on top which is a no brainer.

However, some buckets do have the fish foam rise above the oil and layer on the top of the oil. Then it is a matter of carefully skimming the top foam off and siphoning the oil or carefully dipping it down to the water layer lying below the oil layer.

Save the foam as it is a great coon, mink and canine ingredient. Very fishy and sweet in odor. We use Trout most of the time, so your results may vary depending on your fish type.

Be careful not to agitate the barrel or move it prior to doing this. The slightest agitation can cause you problems with mixing the layers of material to where they must re settle again.

We don't get enough heat to really cook 55 gal drums of oil here.It just doesn't get hot enough here for long enough to really cook the fish well enough to get a good draw of oil. The largest containers we can reasonably use is 5 gal buckets. (1) gal jugs would work the best but we do too much volume to have all those gal jugs sitting around.

so you use what we call the red meat on a spoonie the un edible part I use that and the head and skin a lot of times the red meat is attached to the skin like you said about a half inch to 3/4 " thick thicker by the tail. were do you get spoonbills from bob?Iwould save mine for you but a guy from WV has asked for them but in the future maybe how much would you like you could get barrels full at fish skinning stations at any of the snagging boat ramps, not uncommon to see a hundred or more heads and scraps in the water, only thing you wouldn't be able to obtain is the eggs

I had a fellow years back bring me a bunch of spoonie parts to a convention one year. That was the last I had. Never had any good contacts or someone coming this way to get them close to me on a regular basis. I get plenty of trout from a local hatchery that has been a good source for several years. That is some fine oil there.

Would you mind ranking the top 5 (or 10) fish for making quality oil?


When I say "Pogey" that is the same thing as Menhaden.

I have only worked with the fish available to me locally in quantity. If I was coastal I would most likely have tried others as well.

Trout and Salmon would be my top two picks for their sweet lingering odor. Spoonbill has a different odor but still a good quality oil.I have worked alot with menhaden as a bait but never had access to work with them in making oil. So I dont know what they would produce. In your heat index area I would chunk up some fish available to you and render them a week or so and you will see pretty quick if they will be developing oil at a good rate. Some fish will begin releasing oil in just a few days. Trout is like that.

Trout oil is very unique, sweet and makes a great ingredient if the oil is clean and strained well.

You're talking about rainbow/brook trout types, correct?


Down here, they'd be hard to come by. I'll probably give a few of the fish that seem to be oily a shot.

Yes those are the species I am referring too. You have the same situation I do with the access to certain fish to work with. Try working with what is available to you. That would be the best course to follow.

my area catfish are easily obtained all breeds of catfish and bullheads are considered trash fish. Every time I do bullheads I get a thick black tar looking substance but boy oh boy is it strong! I don't believe the flys can even stand the smell

I had a bucket of trout do that Tony
Real thick tar like oil, ever seen that before in trout

I get a chuckle out of hearing bullheads are "trash fish". I hear it often. Guys I work with said it last week....


I like calling them "buttercats". They're GREAT to eat, as long as they don't come from nasty water (just like other fish) lol

most of ours come from cattle ponds! only time they are fit to eat is the spring time after that their name comes into affect mudcats that has to be a southern thing, but I think the bullheads there are a lot bigger than ours here a 3 lber is big, and typically they are half pound, and have the sharpest fins of any fish hands down. They have more names than carter has pills