I'm not an experienced offshore man so i'm wondering about eating spadefish. I went a couple of weeks ago and the guy i went with was gaffing spadefish off the side of the boat and throwing them in the icechest. He says they are excellent eating. Other people that i have talked to say that they are not good to eat. Are they the offshore hardhead or what?
REALLY big ribcage, so you really need a good size one to make it worth while.....but EXCELLENT fish on the table!!! My wife gets kinda upset with me if I don't bring in at least a couple whenever I go offshore:tongue: . Excellent fried, but also do well on the halfshell on the grill.
The are fairly good tablefare.....many people get spades confused w/ "trigger fish". The trigger meat is much more white.....but the spade is definitely worth frying!
We freedive and spear em......they will swim away from you when you first tip over and start chasin em, but then they gotta turn sideways to check you out and thats when you popem in the gill plate! They can get pretty big....we've shot bulls that were HUGE!
I heard Spadefish tastes pretty good fried up, but the snapper love them even more than the fisherman do. They make excellent cut bait, a fillet is impossible to rip off the hook. I once caught 4 snapper on the same piece of bait and then I had to use a knife to cut it off my hook. ahhh Good times.
I've not had the experience to clean many offshore fish, but I have to say that I have never seen skin as tuff as a trigger's on suck a small fish. The ones we were catching were under 15 inches.
spade fish are great fun to catch
they also make for Excelent bartering when you get back to the big city.
ive traded about 50 pounds of them for beer and a surf rod.\the guy thought they were flounder .........who am i to ruin his dinner ?
A trick I learned for filleting triggers is to start at the tail and go forward. Much easier to filet this way. I like trigger and spadefish for table fare.
yep they are great to eat, try the huachinango sauce on them
take an old popping rod and a handful of 1/8 oz tout leadheads and some fresh dead shrimp or cut bait, that is a blast and you can kinda sight cast or jig at at the big ones.
i've never eaten spadefish, but if one of you bluewater guys would bring some into the dike one day, i'd be happy to come get them and settle this query once and for all.
Went out 20 last week with the wife,son and his bud. My son had a blast with a popping rod with a small jig tipped with shrimp caught 48 of em. They eat great.
Last year the wife 1st time out she got excited seeing all the fish under the boat she demanded the net...after trying Fritos and switching to bread she decked 4 queens to 8lbs my son quit fishing to help her and decked 4 more using white tissue as we needed the rest of the bread for sandwiches.
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