Fish Filleting – Progress Not Perfection

OK so this blog about Fish Filleting is twofold. 

1. To show you how I fillet a fish leaving one side on and…
2. To give you a life lesson in starting before you’re ready and slowly but steadily creating a life of your dreams.

As many of you may know, was a charter fishing guide catching trophy fish for clients since the 80’s.

But despite what many people may think, running a fishing business does have a downside.

Up well before sunrise and often back after dark.

Then calling and emailing people back, moving bookings, weather cancellations, putting kids to bed then gear maintenance at midnight.

Good days are great helping anglers catch the fish of their dreams. Bad days are… well.. awkward.

And when my best mate died of melanoma I realized the job could actually be killing me.

But what to do when all I knew was find fish, catch fish, tie knots and fish filleting.

My dream had always been to make fishing films to educate and entertain people.

But this always took second fiddle to charters and the demands of a young family.

So by age 45 I realized that if I didn’t make it happen soon, it would never happen.

But it was pretty daunting as I really had no idea where to start.

Enter the fish filleting video.

Even though I had bought a Hi8 (yes I’m that old) many years before, I’d never actually edited anything.

I just filmed some fishing action and it all went on the tape (watch some of the old days action here).

But I was old enough to know that the key to getting anywhere is Progress not Perfection!

Of course it took a few weeks to work up the courage.

But I finally caught a little barra and decided to make a fish filleting video which we turned into an informational blog post. 

This is our FIRST EVER tips video made way back in 2013 – progress not perfection right?

Here it is here…

As you can tell by the video, we really did start before we were ready haha.

But it just goes to show that great content will compensate for a pedestrian delivery.

I never would have believed it but we posted this on Facebook (at the time we had just under 1000 followers) and it went “viral” and was watched by 12,000 people in just a few hours.

It made all the angst and worry about making the video worthwhile.

And created a bit of a monster – as we now had many people on social media asking for my assistance with all manner of things fishing.

One thing led to another, and now we have created a series of online fishing courses.

As a result I can go fishing when I want and I no longer HAVE to bake in the sun all day.

Although I often choose to!

Fast forward to 2020 and our new fish filleting video.

As a wise man once said to me, a man who chases two rabbits catches none!

And both Karen and myself were getting very burnt out making the courses, supporting students, and making free fishing tips and videos for our community.

So in 2020 we decided to hire a dedicated videographer to film and edit our videos.

And one of the first things we did was re-film the How to Fillet a Fish video.

As you can see, fish filleting take 2 is a far more slick production.

But we certainly didn’t start out that way!

• We started out with a dream to have a business we could run from a laptop.
• The aim was to enjoy the journey making it a reality.
• Remembering to chase one rabbit at a time helped reduce stress.
• And we avoided a breakdown by realizing that it’s progress not perfection!
• Plus we understand that starting a new project can be daunting and we are apt to make mistakes – however nothing changes if nothing changes. The key is to take the first step.

Now my days are spent making fishing videos (if the weather is good) and the rest of the time helping my students.

Our most popular course has students from over 28 countries covers the fundamentals of using your Fish Finder.

It’s called our Sounder Skills 1 course.

And it’s only $20 Australian at the moment and well worth a look.

If you don’t learn anything let me know and I’ll give you your money back.