Elephant fish

[Benno]

evening all,
managed to hook a couple of elephant fish on the weekend.(tamar river Tas). I was wondering is there a special way to clean these fish.. The best way of filleting them..
Thanks

Cheers Benno

[basserman]

from what i have seen and heard from the man (OLD REXY) you treat them like a shark (they are in the shark family) and all you do is cut the head off peel the skin back and then you can ether fillet them bown the back type bone or just bake whole like any other fish!
never caught one myself but from mates odwn in vic they reckon they are a top tasting fish

[Benno]

Thanks basserman.. I have heard that they are great to eat. I did remember seeing something about them on Rexy.. but i wasn't sure if there was a special way to clean/fillet them. I will give what you have suggested a go and see what happens.
Cheers benno

[blaze]

hi benno
forgot to answer this in the pm
I just run the knife down the back, remove back bone, complete the cut, should end up with 2 fish halves, then just fillet off the skin in portion that are the size you want to cook, if the portions are to small you need to catch bigger fish LOL
cheers
blaze

[smerl]

Are these the suckers that you are taking about? Caught 8 of them at Westernport (Vic) a couple of weeks back. We just filleted and skinned them as we do for any fish and cut the fillets into chunks. Deep fried the chunks in a beer batter. Wasn't too bad - pretty much the same as the flake that you get from the fish and chip shops down your way (probably a lot of that starts oiut as elephant shark anyway). Doesn't quite compare with a nice lightly grilled fillet of pearly or snapper though. Not sure I would keep more than one of them next time.

Cheers,

Smerl

[blaze]

thats the suckers

[kemplers]

there was a rex hunt special once upon a time catching elephant fish in melbourne

[dasher]

Yep knock em on the head asap bleed and gut and put on ice and yummee. One of the few fish that improve with freeziing, ???