In your opinion, what fish makes the best quality oil and has a good yield to it. to be clear I am mostly (not exclusively) talking about smaller fish such as shad, bluegill, perch, or other fish of that size.

Spoonbill.

can't have those in AL, Thanks for the suggestion though

Trout are some of oiliest fish. I'm not sure if you have access to them either.

From your list shad would be the best choice for most oily.

Of the ones you list, shad

Never have tried using them for oil but I figure skipjack may work well.

flat head catfish are good. use the fat in their abdomen

First thing that comes to mind is lake trout! Gawd as they greasers from the Great Lakes!

carp

I never found it worth the time to make rendered oil. I used so much pressed from Cumberland's that I could not have made enough if I tried. The rendered stuff I did make was much more likely to bring unwanted catches like skunks, possums and cougars.

years ago before I started trapping.
we had 2 guys show up to the fish cleaning station in Racine WI , they were trappers and came all set to really work , they had buckets and bags and were very fast and efficient

they would clean your fish , but they wanted all the eggs , fat , guts and heads

basically everything but the fillets but if you wanted your fish hole they were happy for just the guts

as you would expect a trapper to be , these guys were pretty handy with a knife

they would stack the back of a truck with 5 gallon pails of fish parts primarily salmon and trout

obviously lure/bait makers they said they had a long coon line fisherman were very happy to let them clean their fish.

so best might be what is readily available in your area , but fatty lake trout would sure get you oil fast and no one saved the belly fat of a laker with all the pcb warnings least not in Racine

those two guys were getting it done!

Smelt would be my first choice.

I'd like to try a 5 gallon pail of mud minnows just once....

Thanks

I recall it was Hot and they had sweat bands and heavy aprons , they said 2 days of this would set them up with bait for a year.

I don't recall if it was Salmon-O-Ramma week or not but it may well have been that would make sense , busiest fishing week all year in Racine.

A little off track - I used to go to Kewaunee and guys would give you all the heads and leftovers you wanted from Salmon. It was my go to cage bait. Came home and chopped the skulls in half with an axe and froze them.

Do they do beaver for the meat and guts too?????

I have a great carp resource filling up a freezer is pretty easy so 55 gal drums would not take very long for me but I’ve seen folks say they don’t make a good oil?

Thoughts

Menhaden makes the best oil of course you’d need to be east coast salt or brackish water. It’s much easier and probably cheaper to just buy it by the gallon.