Vacuum sealer for fish

[teebig]

I've been through several amazon vacuum sealers now and I'm on the cusp of buying a commercial grade weston sealer. I was doing a bunch of research and came across an article on vacuum sealers which addressed all of the problems I have been having. The problem I had with previous sealers was always the moisture killing the sealer and it appears they fixed that with this one. I've also been told to freeze my fish prior to vacuum sealing but quite frankly I don't really want to mess with freezing and then sealing I just want to do it once and be done.

Has anyone here used one of these? Are there other sealers that are under $100 that you'd recommend given that the only thing I seal is fish and I don't want to freeze them prior to sealing?

 

[bass]

One trick that I learned with my old vacuum sealer is to put a strip of paper towel just inside where the seal is going to be. You can watch it get wet and before the side closest to the sealer is wet hit the seal button. You just want to make sure that the paper towel runs the whole width of the bag. I usually just folded it over and over till it was about 1" wide. That worked pretty well (that was a Foodsaver model from Costco).

 

[Chromatose]

Foodsaver has been my go to sealer for quite a long time now, also the rubber seals are replaceable........Good Luck

 

[jamisonace]

I had that problem with my first food saver but my current model doesn't seem to have that problem.

 

[teebig]

I've had food saver in the past and have had problems with them sealing properly. I have heard about the paper towel trick before and agree that it works, but when we do 200-300 lbs of deer meat that can get old quick. We only do that volume once a year though, most of the time we are just using it for fishing trips. I ended up buying the fish and game sealer from outrigger outdoors and come to find out it can run on a 12 volt battery or wall outlet. That is super nice for fishing because the cleaning stations we go to rarely have power outlets.

I used it once yesterday to put up left over turkey which had a lot of juice and was wet like a fish fillet would be (yes I added the juice to the bag to purposely test it) and it sealed it just fine. So far I'm happy with my purchase but I'll have to put it to work here soon when my family gets together to process a bunch of deer meat.

 

[Gulfstream]

what Bass said