I had to work this out because my fiance likes eating my bait for some reason, best way i found was putting the clusters in iced FRESH water for 15 minutes first then just using the doobie method above rub as much of the gross bits off you can, rubbing with paper towel also helps. Dry off well.
Should be clean as, hot oil will sort the rest out.
A Greek guy I used to work with years ago used nail clippers to remove them. Both for whiting baits and cooking. He reckoned whiting wouldn't touch tentacle baits with suction cups on them.
I've found its more of an issue with the 2 long feeding tentacles. Couple of rinses in water gets rid of most of the hard bits and a good fry till crunchy sorts out the rest.
I Marinised this FORD XFlow engine 250 cast iron head etc, Then designed this 316 Stainless steel sea water cooling system that my Nephew Gary Welded together for me, Thanks Gary, I added a 1 to 1 Borg Warner Velvet Drive assembly, Marinised the Carby, and put it all together into my Dealtry 5.5M half cabin boat, that was made by The respected Dealtry Family in South Australia.This project is finally nearing Completion.