Several years ago a good friend gave me a brand new Buck 223 6 3/8” Creek Fillet Knife. It was a good lifelong friend, you know the ones, it is the guy you met in 1st grade and still talk to in your 30’s. I’m going to talk about some of the knife characteristics now. The blade is 6 3/8” in length, it is made from 420j2 steel, 420j2 is commonly used in highly corrosive environments. It is an easy steel to sharpen, but it doesn’t retain its edge as well as others like 420c, or 440c, but it offers a corrosion resistance the others don’t have. It is also titanium coated. The titanium coating on the blade prevents the moisture, salt, guts, grime, blood, and bile from corroding the blade, and makes the clean up very straight forward. It has a rubber handle that is anti slip, even in the sink with dish soap, and what seems to be an injection molded nylon sheath.
Originally, I was going to complain about this knife. The first time this knife was put to use was on a trout-fishing trip in New York. It was horrible, and the verdict was that the knife was dull and too rigid to be a good fillet knife by everyone that used it. When I went down stairs today to get the knife to take a picture for this post, I found that someone, who shall remain nameless for now. Put the knife away with out cleaning it. So all the trout crap hardened all over the blade, and inside the sheath. My thought this afternoon is that the knife is trashed. So as I had the knife and sheath soaking in some Dawn dish soap and scalding hot water I was thinking how nobody seems to take care of tools that are borrowed. I started scrubbing the knife with the dish brush, and touched up a few spots on the bolster with a Brillo Pad. It looked like new.
This summer I am going to test this out on some Bass and some Bluegills, and giving it a good second chance.