Youth employed to skin fish (9)
I believe the answer is:
stripling
'youth' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'skin fish' is the wordplay.
'skin' becomes 'strip' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'fish' becomes 'ling' (ling is a kind of fish).
'strip'+'ling'='STRIPLING'
'employed to' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for stripling that I've seen before include "Lad" , "Young 'un" , "Young boy" , "Young man" , "Youth" .)