Yeah, I guess if you are harvesting the egg sacs you'd have to slice the belly.We don’t gut before filleting, exactly. I don’t quite know how to explain the process, since I’m not the one doing it. Sometimes we cut the heads off and leave the fish whole - that’s where the scraper comes in really handy. Also, the eggs from the sockeye (red) salmon are saved to make bait for the coho (salmon) so we scrape the eggs out of the reds before completely cutting the fillet off. I guess it’s easier to get them that way. The fillet itself has a membrane on the rib cage that comes off best with the scraper/spoon.
I only fished panfish.