![]() We pulled anchor and headed to harbor, the tops of the swells just barely breaking over our stern. The spadefish hanging out on the rocks just a few feet below kept taunting us, but the fun was over and the wind had started to blow out of the west. We kept pitching and pitching, hoping to catch a few more to round out our limit, but they had moved on. We had 26 blues in the box quicker than it took me to write this. Our friend Cam got bitten AND hooked by the same fish, and just about the whole boat had a sheen from the fish slime, blood and tiny scales that covered everything we touched.Īnd just like that, it cut off. At the time, the limit for blues was ten per person, so we pretty quickly filled our cooler. We lost more tackle than we’d care to admit, and the bucktails that survived were completely stripped by their sharp teeth- not even the paint was left. The fish were everywhere, and the surface of the water boiled with the violence of their feeding activity. If you haven’t been in the middle of a blitz, written word will fail to convey the excitement and chaos of it. Out of nowhere, a big school of bluefish cruised through, and we quickly re-rigged with bucktails (no leader- we didn’t bring any) and started casting. We launched our tiny boat and headed a mile offshore on a dead calm day to some structure that we thought might hold spadefish. It isn’t grouper or snapper, but most fish aren’t.Our most memorable bluefish day was a few years back, when we were still getting our feet wet with fishing in the Chesapeake Bay. Grilled steaks are great, too, but it’s really easy to over cook them grilling.īluefish is excellent bled well, iced well, and eaten within 48hours, fresh only. I hardly ever have to do this part after bleeding and keeping the fillets cold, tho. Really cold.īefore cooking, you can also soak the meat in ice water with a little (1t/qt ice water) lemon juice or vinegar to counteract any remaining ammonia. Bury the shark in ice, a slurry if you can.Īt the cleaning table, completely skin and cut out the red meat. So, cut behind the head, completely gut, and bleed out as much as possible over the side. Heading and tailing and gutting is best, but no longer legal on the water. Sharks have urea in the body that makes them smell and taste bad if not properly handled. Oh yeah, the time before I ate a big sail cat (snot cat). ![]() I think the stink is all about the skin.īottom line, I am going to re-think this whole shark thing. The one that had that stink taint that time, we had simply pulled the skin off (not easy!) rather than cut it off, and a lot of that sub-cutaneous red meat stayed on the fillets. Not these! I think maybe gutting (and bleeding) it right away, and skinning it by filleting one side of the shark like you'd do with a "normal" fish, and getting ALL of the red-tainted meat near the skin off, was the key. I've eaten shark before and the meat retained just a hint of that "shark stink taint" that nearly made me gag. Firm, no fishy or "off" taste, very good. To prep for broiling, I rinsed & then dried the fillets, finger-wiped 'em all with olive oil, ground some sea salt & some black pepper on 'em, put 'em on a grate over a drip pan and put 'em in a pre-heated oven with the broiler on & cooked 'em for about 6-8 minutes.īluefish: fishy taste. We fillet'd the fish normally (made two big fillets each with the sharks, of course cutting the skin and all reddish meat off), split the meat up and put -em in the fridge. One had some white spots on it, the other didn't, not sure if they were different species. I think they were Atlantic Sharpnose sharks. The guy I was with eats everything, he wanted to keep the bluefish & sharks to eat. We immediately started catching ladyfish, mixed in with some decent sized keeper trout, and we also got two bluefish. Flats were very clear, but out there is was a little cloudy. We were throwing red-headed jigs with white, and nuclear chicken, Gulp shrimp on them. Marks last Thursday, no luck on the shallower flats, oyster bars or creek mouths (was an outgoing tide), I mean NOTHING (except pinfish in full force), so we went to about 10 & 11 feet more or less straight off Slough Island, and started getting some fish.
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